Getting the big picture on those globe-trotting public servants

National Post, 08 January 2021

To a certain degree, public health directives, aimed broadly as they are, are always at least partially false.

The furor over public officials travelling when public health advice has long been otherwise is largely focused on the double standard. Do as I say, not as I do. It is not a new problem, but no less aggravating for that reason.

There is another dimension that sheds light on the nature of public health orders, namely that they prohibit all kinds of activity that is, in those specific, particular circumstances, safe. That inescapable reality means that public officials often give public health advice that they do not believe is true, at least in part.

Those officials who travelled abroad evidently did not think that it was dangerous, otherwise they would not have gone. They concluded that if they followed the various protocols it was safe to travel. Yet they promote public health messages that appear to consider that very same travel to be dangerous.

It’s a conflict between aggregates and particularities. To a certain degree, public health directives, aimed broadly as they are, are always at least partially false.

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