There is an understandable tendency among those who overestimated and overreacted to the COVID-19 threat to use ignorance as an excuse. How could we have known any better when all that was being directed at us was paranoia and panic? How could we have navigated the situation more rationally when it evolved so rapidly?

That is more or less the argument Dr. Emily Oster made in the Atlantic this week when she asked for “COVID amnesty.”