Westneat: Story of the pandemic

Sessler is a former race car driver who got MAGA’s attention by calling for the hanging of the nation’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci. He even protested the government sending out free coronavirus tests. He’s running a second time for Congress in Central Washington.

The pandemic may be past, but clearly the culture war backlash to it is not. The fight over how it was handled has moved from the hospital rooms to the courtrooms — and also, as the above shows, to the political organizing rooms.

Much of the modern right wing of GOP politics is fueled by anger at COVID-era rules. It isn’t a prime topic on the campaign trail anymore, but the pandemic remains a common animating principle for the right.

All of this is fascinating. We all just experienced the same pandemic together, yet the story of it is highly contested. It’s only now starting to be written.

On July 26, a pandemic review came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the state of Washington plays a starring role. The study looked at state-imposed restrictions and parsed out what actually worked, and didn’t, to save lives.

Washington was one of the 10 most restrictive states, the study found. We did it all, from vaccine mandates for some state and medical employees to mask requirements to school shutdowns, bar closures and so on. People here followed the rules, too: Washington ranked third-highest in the nation in mask use, and second highest in limiting activities outside the home.

Out of all that, one thing worked the best: vaccine mandates. Second best was mandatory masking in schools. What worked less well were school and bar closures or attempts at restricting gatherings. In retrospect, school closures were “too aggressively pursued,” the study noted.

The study estimates that if all states had done what Washington and other restrictive states did, it would have reduced deaths by 118,000 to 248,000 below the 1.2 million that died in the U.S. in the two-year period.

“These findings do not support the views of those opposing COVID-19 restrictions who erroneously believe the restrictions did not work,” wrote Christopher Ruhm, a public policy and economics professor at University of Virginia.

I opposed making vaccines mandatory at the time. My gut was that taking a medicine is a “my body, my choice” situation where wiggle room is warranted. “It wouldn’t be worth the political firestorm,” I wrote. I was both wrong and right. It turns out it worked better than any other single measure, so for saving lives it probably was worth it. Gov. Jay Inslee was right. But it came with high personal costs; it cost some their jobs. It also did touch off that political firestorm. Nearly three years on, the backlash appears to have radicalized large parts of the Republican Party.

The rebellion against wearing masks remains one of the stupider episodes, though. Masks were an incredibly low-cost, noninvasive virus-fighting tool. According to this study, they worked.

I’m revisiting all this because the question of how we handle future crises seems up in the air. The cultural and political battle over the pandemic has by no means been settled. What story are we ultimately going to tell ourselves about what happened? And who is going to tell it?

It won’t be spelled out, but these questions are on your next ballot.