The Pandemic That Broke America's Trust

Something happened during COVID that I don't think America will ever fully recover from. And perhaps we shouldn't.

Millions of Americans who had spent their lives generally trusting their government began to see it differently. They watched businesses shuttered, churches closed, children kept out of classrooms, and families denied the chance to say goodbye to dying loved ones.

Americans were told where they could go, how close they could stand to another person, and what they had to put on their faces. People lost their livelihoods. Children lost years they will never get back.

And through it all, we were told to trust the experts.

Then people started asking questions. Why six feet? How effective were the masks? Why were schools still closed? Where did this virus come from? Were there other treatments worth considering?

The response was often swift and ugly. Physicians who challenged prevailing policies faced professional consequences. Ordinary Americans were ridiculed, branded conspiracy theorists, and sometimes silenced on social media. Much of the news media seemed perfectly content to help enforce the boundaries of acceptable opinion.

And as the years passed, some of those supposedly settled questions turned out to be worth asking after all.

The Science Was Settled. Until It Wasn't.

Remember the six-foot distancing rule? It dictated how businesses operated, how churches gathered, and how Americans lived their daily lives. Yet Anthony Fauci later acknowledged to congressional investigators that he couldn't recall the scientific basis for choosing that particular distance.

Think about the disruption caused by a rule whose precise scientific justification remained so uncertain.

Masking recommendations changed repeatedly. The evidence behind particular mandates, especially those imposed on young children, was considerably more complicated than the public was led to believe. Meanwhile, millions of children suffered academic setbacks and social disruption from prolonged school closures. Parents warned about those consequences for months.

Then there was the question of COVID's origins.

Suggesting that the virus might have escaped from a laboratory could get you dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. Today, several federal intelligence agencies consider a laboratory-related origin plausible, although the question remains unresolved.

And the research itself?

A 2023 report from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found serious failures in federal oversight of research involving EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Critical reporting requirements went unmet, and the National Institutes of Health failed to follow up for nearly two years.

The very institutions demanding the public's confidence had failed to adequately supervise research involving potentially consequential biological risks.

That should trouble every American.

Who Was Watching the Watchdogs?

COVID also brought something else into sharper focus: the remarkably close relationship between government health agencies and the pharmaceutical industry.

Most Americans probably don't realize that pharmaceutical companies help fund the FDA through fees paid to review their products. Congress established the arrangement decades ago. Today, those fees provide substantial support for the agency responsible for regulating the very companies paying them.

Federal scientists and institutions can also receive royalties from medical inventions developed through government research. These arrangements are legal, but they create financial interests the public deserves to understand.

Now consider the government's role during COVID. Washington helped finance pharmaceutical development, purchased billions of dollars in medical products, evaluated their safety and effectiveness, and issued recommendations governing their use.

That's an extraordinary concentration of influence over the medical decisions of millions of Americans.

Questions about COVID treatments deserve continued scrutiny. Remdesivir was widely used in hospitalized patients despite disagreements about its clinical benefits and concerns over known adverse effects. Americans deserve to know how those treatment decisions were made and whether competing evidence received a fair hearing.

The same goes for vaccine mandates. As evidence about breakthrough infections and transmission evolved, officials had an obligation to reassess policies that affected people's jobs, education, and ability to participate in ordinary life.

Instead, many Americans who questioned those policies found themselves treated as threats to public health.

And that brings us to perhaps the most disturbing revelation of all.

When Washington Tried to Control the Conversation

While Americans were questioning COVID policies, the Biden administration was pressing social media companies to crack down on content it considered misinformation.

In July 2021, President Biden publicly accused social media platforms of killing people by allowing COVID misinformation to spread. Behind the scenes, White House officials were demanding more aggressive action from Facebook, including against accounts associated with the so-called “disinformation dozen.”

Court records document repeated communications about removing content, reducing its reach, and changing moderation policies. Facebook reported removing millions of pieces of COVID-related content, although individual removals cannot all be attributed to government demands.

Consider what was happening. The same administration responsible for defending sweeping public-health policies was pressuring the platforms where Americans went to challenge those policies.

In 2026, the Justice Department settled lawsuits alleging that Biden administration officials had improperly pressured social media companies to suppress protected speech. One agreement restricts certain federal agencies from threatening platforms with penalties to suppress lawful expression for ten years.

The Supreme Court had previously dismissed the principal lawsuit on standing grounds, leaving the constitutional merits unresolved. The communications themselves are documented.

And they should alarm anyone who values the First Amendment.

Americans were already struggling to understand a new disease, changing medical advice, and extraordinary government restrictions. They had every reason to question what they were being told.

Yet federal officials were working behind the scenes to influence which criticisms could circulate on the platforms where much of the country now gets its information.

How much legitimate debate was lost? How many Americans were discouraged from speaking because they feared being labeled dangerous or irresponsible?

We may never know the full extent.

Where Was the News Media?

The press should have been asking many of these questions from the beginning.

Instead, too much of the coverage treated government pronouncements as settled truth and dissent as a problem to be managed. Physicians and researchers who challenged prevailing policies were often portrayed as fringe figures. Questions about the virus's origins, treatment decisions, and the financial relationships between government and pharmaceutical companies deserved far more investigation.

The media's responsibility is to challenge powerful institutions, especially when those institutions are making decisions that affect nearly every American.

During COVID, too many journalists seemed to forget that.

And Americans noticed.

An Awakening We Shouldn't Forget

I suspect the pandemic permanently changed how millions of Americans view their government, the medical establishment, and the news media.

They remember the closed businesses, the lost jobs, the children falling behind, and the loved ones who died alone. They remember being told that the science was settled, even as the guidance changed. They remember the contempt directed at people who dared to ask questions.

And now they know more about the institutions making those decisions, the financial relationships behind the medical system, and the government's efforts to influence what Americans could hear and say.

The damage to public trust runs deep. Restoring it will require transparency, independent oversight, and a willingness to acknowledge mistakes that had enormous consequences for ordinary people.

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of COVID is that millions of Americans began doing something they should have been doing all along: questioning what they were told.

They started looking beyond the headlines, reading original documents, considering competing arguments, and making up their own minds. That instinct is essential in a country built on the principle that government answers to its citizens.

And it should apply to every administration, every federal agency, and every powerful institution, regardless of who is in charge.

I don't know whether Americans will ever fully regain the trust they once placed in these institutions.

Maybe they shouldn't.

COVID opened a lot of eyes in America. Let's hope they stay open.