Jonathan Chait Says Conservatives Are Taunting Libs Over All They Got Wrong on COVID

Five years on from COVID-19 most likely escaping from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, we're seeing a lot of pieces in the legacy media about how they might have gotten it wrong. It seems enough time has passed that the media can admit they made mistakes. The New York Times ran a piece acknowledging that it was "pressure from the administration" that led to censorship of any talk of a lab leak … "we shouldn't have done it." Sen. Tom Cotton is owed a huge apology after being accused of spreading an unfounded conspiracy theory. CNN's Dr. Lena Wen, who announced that the cloth face masks we'd been wearing were "little more than facial decoration," admitted recently that some of the "conspiracy theories" were true, such as the vaccine having an impact on menstrual cycles.

Jonathan Chait, who outed Twitchy as a conservative rage curator, says that five years on, liberals are beginning to admit their mistakes … while conservatives are doing just the opposite.

Five years after covid struck, liberals have reconsidered their mistakes, while conservatives have done the opposite. pic.twitter.com/ntK4NrNt0J
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 25, 2025

Oh, so Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a conservative now?

Chait writes:

The recent fifth anniversary of the onset of the coronavirus pandemic put the difference between the contemporary right and left on stark display. Liberals have engaged in searching self-reflection—on school closings, the lab-leak hypothesis, the political aftereffects, and other unanticipated lessons. Conservatives have used the occasion to engage in a round of self-congratulations and taunting of the libs.
Recently, the New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci wrote a column criticizing scientific institutions for misleading the public over the possibility that COVID-19 had escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote a gloating response, which generally typified the right-wing mood on this issue. It included this astonishing passage: “Five years later, the very people who misled us about the pandemic are starting to make embarrassing admissions.”

There's been some performative reconsideration on the left, but most public health technocrats would be gung ho to reinstitute lockdowns, mandates, mass firings etc. given another opportunity. They fundamentally feel they are the experts and didn't do anything wrong.
— The Ivy Exile (@TheIvyExile) March 25, 2025

If Joe Biden were still president, we'd be in lockdown over bird flu.

I have reached the inescapable conclusion that Jonathan, rather than thinking we’re stupid, is stupid enough himself to think he can sell this.
— Jack Bauer after dark (@JackBauerAD) March 25, 2025

I made zero mistakes and democrats robbed my oldest of his senior year, baseball, prom, graduation, etc etc etc.

I speak for him when I say, “kiss my ass”.
— Queen Velvet (@TMIWITW) March 25, 2025

The core lesson conservatives and the public learned from the pandemic was caveat emptor: don't be too quick to trust the policymakers and public health scientists. Democrats seem to have concluded that they regret nothing. So I think you have it backward, as usual.
— cadavatron (@cadavatron) March 25, 2025

The left still has idiots walking around with masks on while they’re alone, outside. Maybe sit this one out.
— Dr. Niles Crane’s Current Affairs Liaison (@tonofkeys) March 25, 2025

They’re trying to rewrite history and cover their asses you clown. It’s all empty rhetoric until people are held accountable.
— Joe Ziskey (@JZiskey) March 25, 2025

There will be no forgiveness. The media or the government cannot rectify this. People will have to pay for their "mistakes."
— JJ Swearingen (@SwearinEveryday) March 25, 2025

Oh its so unfair how the thoughtful liberals have 'reconsidered' (aka. ignored) their mistakes, while those awful boorish conservathugs refuse to apologize for everything they were right about
— ǝɹᴉH ʎʇᴉsɹǝʌᴉᗡ (@helpful_signage) March 25, 2025