The Formation of the Mind During COVID
My first assumption during the early months of the COVID period was simple. If people could see the evidence, they would make better decisions. I believed that truth, once placed in the open, possessed a quiet strength of its own. That assumption did not survive contact with events.
In July 2020 I published a call to censure Governor Greg Abbott. The post argued that mask mandates, gathering limits, business closures, and a unilateral contact-tracing contract exceeded constitutional authority.¹ During the same period I published a series of posts examining statewide mortality trends, comparing COVID-19 with prior Texas flu seasons, and reviewing emerging early-treatment literature.² Together they reflected a consistent intellectual habit: returning to primary sources, historical comparisons, and publicly available data rather than relying solely on institutional summaries. Based on the publicly available statewide mortality figures I was examining at the time, I concluded that the data did not support the characterization of an uncontrolled epidemic requiring the emergency measures then being imposed. That conclusion became the basis for the call to censure. Healthcare workers in Bexar County were already being furloughed. These statements were made while the policies were still in force.
The same months produced a series of short posts on masks. Cloth and surgical masks were treated as both ineffective against respiratory viruses in community settings and increasingly ritualistic. One noted the Spanish Flu historical record and Japanese cultural practice. Others described the psychological dimension of continued masking and the absurdity of escalating to multiple layers. A child’s visible fear of going outside without a mask was recorded as one of the saddest observations of the time.³
Early treatment material was handled in the same way. When the Peru mass-distribution analysis of ivermectin appeared, the post simply presented the published finding.⁴ The important point was not any single agent. It was the habit of returning to primary studies and observational data rather than relying upon institutional summaries. That habit continued as other repurposed agents entered the discussion. Primary sources kept appearing on the site while official guidance moved in the opposite direction.
My error was not in trusting evidence. My error was assuming that evidence occupied the same place in public life that it occupied in my own reasoning. Additional data did not produce reconsideration. Questioning itself became a loyalty test. “Trust the Science” functioned less as a method of inquiry and more as a demand for deference. The archive reflects this shift even where exact dates for many short posts remain unconfirmed. What began as an effort to place better information in front of readers encountered an institutional and cultural refusal to receive it.
The classical parallel is Cassandra, the Trojan princess given true prophecy and cursed so that she would never be believed. The parallel is not dramatic self-description. It is descriptive of a recurring experience: evidence was available, it was stated publicly, and it was disregarded not because it had been refuted but because it had become socially and institutionally inadmissible. Platform consequences followed. After YouTube restrictions, the platform was treated only as a courtesy channel, never again as a trusted medium. Exact enforcement details are not yet independently documented on the site and remain distinguished from recollection.
The deeper subject is the formation of the mind. For me this was never merely a political question. It became an exercise in living the conviction that faith and reason belong together, and that neither can flourish where evidence is subordinated to institutional loyalty. I began with the ordinary expectation that reason and evidence retain their proper authority even under institutional pressure. What the episode demonstrated is that authority can demand the suspension of that expectation. When evidence is subordinated to loyalty, the habits required by fides et ratio—preference for primary sources, comparison of claims against available data, distinction between authority and evidence—become acts of resistance rather than ordinary intellectual procedure.
The Health-category archive, incomplete as the dating still is, shows that the information I was presenting existed, was publicly accessible, and was often rejected or ignored despite its availability. Later posts continue threads first raised while the emergency measures were still in force. The record does not claim omniscience. It claims contemporaneity. That distinction matters because history is not written only from hindsight; it is also written from what thoughtful observers were able to see while events were still unfolding.
Personal forgiveness of those involved remains obligatory. Public amnesia is not. The next essay turns to accountability as prevention. The foundation for that discussion is the simple fact that the divergence between data and policy was visible in real time to anyone willing to look.
Notes
- Karen Early, “Censure RINO Abbott,” Fides et Ratio, 8-9 July 2020, https://fidesetratio.us/censure-rino-abbott/.
- Karen Early, “Is Covid-19 Becoming Less Deadly?” Fides et Ratio, 17 July 2020, https://fidesetratio.us/is-covid-19-becoming-less-deadly/.
- Karen Early, “Texas: Covid-19 Past 2 Flu Seasons compared to Covid-19,” Fides et Ratio, 17 July 2020, https://fidesetratio.us/texas-covid-19-past-2-flu-seasons-compared-to-covid-19/. See also the related proposed letter comparing Texas COVID-19 deaths with prior flu and pneumonia figures, https://fidesetratio.us/a-proposed-letter-to-county-republican-party/.
- Multiple short posts under the recurring title “Masks,” Fides et Ratio (exact individual dates unconfirmed), including https://fidesetratio.us/masks-13/, https://fidesetratio.us/masks-22/, https://fidesetratio.us/masks-24/, and https://fidesetratio.us/masks-27/.
- “Ivermectin in Peru,” Fides et Ratio, https://fidesetratio.us/ivermectin-in-peru/, citing the published analysis of mass IVM treatments and excess deaths in Peru (ScienceDirect).