by Cory Franklin

March 22, 2023

COVID is now three years old and like any ill-behaving  3-year-old it can be hard to fathom. But that won’t stop scientists, physicians, science journalists and politicians from attempting to interpret its idiosyncrasies. As COVID winds down from an uncontrolled pandemic to a more manageable endemic phase, be prepared for all sorts of commentary – self-serving and otherwise – on how public health officials and politicians have reacted. For those wish to keep score, here are some handy bullet points:

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and revisionist history.

Revisionist history will be rampant as people cover their tracks regarding what they said and did three years ago compared to what they say and advise today. 

The worst, most corrupting lie is the truth poorly told.

The quote from the French author Bernanos perfectly encapsulates so many of the COVID controversies  including masks, vaccines, and lockdowns. 

It’s far easier to judge the past with today’s  knowledge, than it is to  judge the past with what we knew at the time.      

Regarding things like lockdowns and school closings, the preferred path seems more obvious to us today than it did then.

Hindsight is 20/20, but not for everybody.    

But even with today’s knowledge many people will still draw the wrong conclusions                                               

The worst harms done during the pandemic were generally done by people who were most certain what they were doing was right.

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” Famous words written by  Oliver Cromwell  in a letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland in August 1650.  

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare’s words from Hamlet are a reminder that all human knowledge has its limits. 

It’s foolish to ignore the experts, but it’s just as foolish to believe them all the time.

Science by authority has its limits as well.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”

One of the wisest bits of scientific advice ever was given by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, who knew that the road to scientific disaster was by convincing yourself of things that weren’t true. 

“Data are not facts.” 

“Facts are not information.”

“Information is not truth.”

“Truth is not knowledge.” 

“Knowledge is not wisdom”

The gap between data and wisdom is wide.

Study the pandemic carefully and you will learn the answers to questions. That is the good news. But the bad news is that you will also learn there exists a greater number of questions without answers and that the number of those unanswerable questions never stops growing.                                                                                   

The pandemic is essentially an infinite jigsaw puzzle,  and even with our best efforts all we can do is fit an occasional piece.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.                                                                                               

You may read that the pandemic unfolded the way it did because of something like systemic racism or Donald Trump. These are emotional conclusions, not borne out by facts. The pandemic unfolded, not because of these things, but because Nature has always behaved this way.     

When you inject a little politics into science, it’s politics.

No matter how tempting, never inject politics into scientific analysis, because that scientific analysis will invariably be compromised. 

Generals fight the last war, public health officials fight the last pandemic.

It wasn’t so much that they didn’t learn from history, it’s that they unthinkingly adopted the old playbooks. And those didn’t always work. 

Every pandemic is distinct in its own way.                                                                                               

Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each unhappy in its own way.

“Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” 

Attributed to several authors. What they didn’t say was that even if you do learn from history, you are condemned to repeat it.    

Nature gets the last word.

Every time.

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Cory Franklin, physician and writer is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com.

He was director of medical intensive care at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for more than 25 years. An editorial ng the pathologists who studied it intently but had no idea what body part it could be. This was before it was known as trolling.)

There is a lesson here. The next time someone tells you, with unmistakable conviction, that he believes in “the science,” gladly offer to discuss science with him over a sandwich. Give him a choice, chorizo or perhaps kosher salami. board contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page, he writes freelance medical and non-medical articles. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Post, Guardian, Washington Post and has been excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Cory was also Harrison Ford’s technical adviser and one of the role models for the character Ford played in the 1993 movie, “The Fugitive.” His YouTube podcast “Rememberingthepassed” has received 900,000 hits to date. He published “Chicago Flashbulbs” in 2013, “Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” in 2015, and most recently coauthored, A Guide to Writing College Admission Essays: Practical Advice for Students and Parents in 2021.