We can forgive each other, but the powerful should be held accountable.

Forgiving a friend is different than forgiving Gavin Newsom.

Brown University Economist Emily Oster — who I deeply respect — has a piece out this morning encouraging forgiveness for actions and words over the past few years: “a pandemic amnesty.” And I do think Oster is right that, between friends and loved ones, we should strongly consider forgiving pandemic mistakes. At the same time, we absolutely need institutional and political accountability for our pandemic response.

Let’s use the Iraq War as an example. I suspect most Americans forgave friends and family members who thought Iraq had WMDs in a way that they were unwilling to forgive George W. Bush or, rest in peace, Donald Rumsfeld. And, of course, there were congressional hearings about the war. The media was also held accountable and The New York Times ultimately took responsibility for its problematic Iraq War reporting.

As we begin to think about forgiving our friends who refused to meet for a beer outside in spring 2020 — or, alternatively, friends who dismissed earnest fears about the virus — we simultaneously need to aggressively plan for institutional and political accountability. This is not a radical idea. Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia — government and civil society — have collectively produced many thousands of pages assessing their respective pandemic responses. And they didn’t mince words. Here’s a passage from…