1/ Public trust is critical to the effectiveness of institutions, professionals, and officials. But it can easily be lost. For weeks, dying people have been made to draw their last breath alone in hospitals and hospices, denied last rites or even the presence of a family member.
2/ Public health requirements, we were told, simply couldn't be relaxed. No exceptions, even to support and comfort the dying. But now some of the same health professionals and public officials who insisted on that brutally rigorous policy are supporting mass demonstrations that
3/ by any reckoning pose a massively greater threat to public health and safety. In this late season of our experience, I'm accustomed to hypocrisy and bad faith among our professional elites and public officials; but this one is nevertheless stunning to me. Just stunning.
