COVID's Worst Victim: America's Trust

Today, Americans are grieving — their trust in great institutions has died.  Americans have lost faith in Washington; in federal medical bureaucracies like the CDC, FDA, and NIH; in legal institutions including the FBI and DOJ, and in school systems from K–12 through universities.

Science itself has been called into question.  Politicians and bureaucrat-M.D.s claim they "follow the science," but real scientists, clinical physicians, and policy experts say that what Washington follows isn't science at all.

As COVID spreads and trust fades, Americans are experiencing grief in five stages: confusion, panic, control, disillusionment, and renewal.

Early in the COVID pandemic, Americans were confused.  Based on advice from the COVID Task Force, state governors implemented mandates for masks and other PPE, social distancing, the prohibition against gatherings, testing everyone, and strict lockdowns.  The FDA prohibited therapeutic drugs, though frontline doctors were reporting success.  Fauci told people to wear two masks, not merely one, even though studies in Florida, Massachusetts, and school systems in New York and Sweden found no "correlation ... [between clinical outcomes and] mask mandates."