Talking in Absolutes Has Ruined Our COVID-19 Response

Everything must be opened! Everything is already open!

Everyone dying of COVID is unvaccinated! What about long COVID?

The first two months of 2022 has been an absolute disaster when it comes to the media narrative, and thus public perception, of the COVID-19 response. It’s a continuation of the same thing I first wrote about in December 2014 in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

At the time, I was focused on the racism tearing our country apart, without realizing the hell that would await us with the election of Donald Trump and the rise of white nationalism. I only knew our country was splintering apart because we absolutely could not speak in anything but absolutes.

As we come upon the dreaded two-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic washing ashore in the United States, we are again stuck in that same awful situation where the extremes on both sides of any debate are the loudest, and thus the most amplified.

On one side, you have the “everything must open!” side, who is railing against any and all COVID-19 restrictions, which in most cases is really just an anti-mask position. I live in Washington, D.C. and I cannot stress enough how everything is open. I went to two pro wrestling shows in mid-January surrounded by…