During the Covid-19 pandemic, it became a cliché for historians, pundits, commentators, and every jackanapes with an ability to broadcast his thoughts to tell us that the survivors of the influenza pandemic of 1918 barely ever talked about it afterward, even if they were voluble public figures who experienced the tragedy personally. At the time I thought this was all quite strange.
Now it makes perfect sense to me. As the news poured in about China closing its most productive industrial centers, and Lombardy, Italy, experiencing a medical enormity where hospitals were genuinely overwhelmed, I joined early in the folly calling for school closures. I thought it would be a two- or three-week thing while the U.S. closed its borders to China and Italy. Within a few months I was asking for relief from the strictures imposed on us. The one redeeming thing I can say for myself about this time is that in that first month, even though it literally cost me friendships and the respect of some of my peers, I defended skeptics such as First Things editor Rusty Reno and British commentator Peter Hitchens who questioned our stampede into madness. I thought they were wrong, but I hated the way they were savaged and that normally intelligent people were trying to morally forbid debate. Maybe the other thing is that I was very early to reject the wet-market thesis and showed Jim Geraghty a convincing video arguing for the lab leak, which he ran with and turned into one of the most important beats of the pandemic.
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