Can you do me a favor in the audience and stand up if you thought that during these times saying these things made you somehow a lesser human being?

It was such a striking moment.

It crystallized a set of grievances about the pandemic that linger, where people felt that they were judged as selfish or as deniers.

based on their views around the pandemic response.

Death threats for me? essentially a propaganda campaign, alleging that I wanted to let the virus rip, that I wanted to kill people, none of which was true.

The goal was to help government achieve its ends and not in any way call into question the policies.

The problem with that was that these policies were not tested.

There were a lot of reasons to doubt whether they would be successful, and reality checking needed to happen.