Letter: Pandemic lessons must be remembered

While COVID-19 may have gone out with a whimper, the cruel effects of the policy response will be with us for generations to come. To those who supported the government policies, I hope you've learned your lesson and realize you were wrong.

Our young generation is likely forever traumatized from reckless school closures as can be seen by the dramatic rise in self-harm, drug use and counseling services and the dramatic decrease in academic scores. Thousands of lives were shattered when small businesses were forced to close after selective lockdowns, while thousands more were lost from not receiving a life saving cancer screening.

Vaccine passports, which legalized discrimination, only hurt businesses and fueled anti-vaccine sentiment. The inhumane response did as much or more damage to the social fabric of our nation as the virus did.

Most who tried to warn the nation of the dangers of these policies were censored, de-platformed, fired or smeared in the press. Many citizens and leaders, gripped by fear and irrationality, joined in. They deferred to authority to do their thinking for them, blindly cheered on the bad policies and mindlessly shut down any and all dissent.

After all these horrible, unethical policies and having one of the best health care systems in the world, the United States had one of the worst mortality outcomes of any country during the pandemic. Now that our country has failed in devastating fashion, we'd be insane not to rethink our future strategies.

Mike Dobbins

Riverside