What I got wrong about the pandemic
I don’t want to overstate things, but in the United States at least, it feels as though the coronavirus pandemic is coming to an end. The number of infections and the number of deaths have now plummeted to levels not seen since last summer. Last week’s announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the fully vaccinated can resume pre-pandemic activities had a profound effect on the parts of the country that listen to medical experts. Large corporations are relaxing their mask-wearing guidelines. Finally, in 48 hours I will be fully vaccinated, and by the Law of Punditry this means that We Are At An Inflection Point.
Over the past 14 months, I have written a fair amount about the pandemic, both in the column and elsewhere. Heck, the novel coronavirus made its first Spoiler Alerts appearance in January of last year.
Writing continuously about a shock in real time is a great way to get a lot of stuff wrong. As we begin to enter a post-pandemic era, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts thought it would be useful to revisit some of the arguments and assumptions made over the past year and change to see what I got wrong.