"We are the science" and "We knew nothing" are incompatible arguments

A lot of times something is right in front of you but you only recognize it when someone else verbalizes the observation.

They have pivoted from “follow The Science” (and we are The Science) to “nobody knew anything so don’t hold us to account”.

— Aaron Kheriaty, MD (@akheriaty) November 7, 2022

Indeed.

Emily Oster's plea for amnesty for authoritarians who inflicted so much damage and pain on everyone, taking advantage of a whipped up frenzy of panic, has accelerated this transition but it was emerging beforehand.

For the longest time, radical policies and treatments were imposed on everyone because of the purported science (which was, almost uniformly either never there or pointing 180 degrees away from what the experts were recommending).  They claimed the authority to impose these policies because of "the Science" or even that they themselves were "the Science."  It was as absurd a claim at the time.  

Now that the predicted catastrophe from their actions is coming into focus, they are reversing their position completely.  "We couldn't have known."

Except that we did know.  We did know that masks would not make a difference.  We did know that closing schools would have educational and social detrimental consequences.  We did know that travel bans were at best a very short term benefit.  We did know that banning religious observation was a breach of civil rights.  We did know that mandating experimental and novel vaccines for novel viruses was a highly risky step.  We did know that stripping people of speech and jobs was a breach of human rights.  We did know that ostracizing citizens for well evidenced and argued positions was a breach of civil discourse and government trust.  

We knew all this.  All this was expressed by ordinary people and by experts outside the orbit of the authoritarians.

To claim scientific ignorance when you were earlier claiming scientific omnipotence is the next step in this shameful journey by the chattering class.  That, and asking that they be forgiven for the error of their ways when they have neither acknowledged nor even attempted to atone for those errors and indeed still persist in them.