COVID and the Collapse of Wisdom: How Fear, Certainty, and Coercion Broke Human Coexistence

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

A recent CNN report says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to place a “black box” warning on COVID-19 vaccines, the agency’s most serious safety label for medicines. This warning is meant to highlight life-threatening risks that doctors and patients must consider. The report says this move is unusual because such warnings are rare for vaccines and could change how people see COVID-19 immunizations. The plan is not finalized and may change, but it represents a major shift from how vaccines were framed earlier in the pandemic.

This recent development affirms the doubts many people had from the beginning about how information was shared, how risk was communicated, and how baseless the certainty experts and officials originally claimed truly was. What was once described globally as safe and necessary for all now faces a narrative that includes serious and deadly risk language. That shift erodes trust because it confirms for us skeptics and critical thinkers that evolving science and evolving policy left the public without steady, transparent communication. It shows that early certainty gave way to uncertainty, and that change can undermine confidence in institutions charged with public health.

COVID not only tested hospitals and laboratories. It tested human wisdom. It tested whether free people can think and reason together in the face of fear.

In late 2019 and early 2020, the world met a new pathogen in real time. Officials and researchers used words like “novel” because it was. The World Health Organization publicly described a “novel coronavirus” tied to pneumonia cases in Wuhan in early January 2020.  The United States logged its first confirmed case in January 2020, with early clinical reports describing a new coronavirus and rapid escalation of concerns.

From that first moment, the public narrative leaned heavily into the idea of maximal danger. Some of that was responsible. Leaders faced uncertainty, imperfect data, and the real memory of past outbreaks. But most of it became performative. Doom sells. Panic mobilizes. And panic creates permission.

Even basic questions became political landmines. How does this virus spread? How deadly is it for different age groups? What works? What does not? In March 2020, the WHO commentary emphasized droplet and contact routes and said airborne transmission was not reported in a large early analysis.

Over time, evidence and guidance evolved, and the airborne or aerosol debate became a long-running controversy that many scientists argued should have been resolved sooner and communicated more clearly.

That pattern repeated everywhere. Certainty up front. Revision later. Minimal accountability in between.

Then came the vaccines. In December 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccine received emergency use authorization in the U.S., after an unprecedented development sprint that combined new platform maturity, massive funding, and parallelized trials and manufacturing.

Many people experienced these shots as a scientific triumph. Many others experienced them as something else entirely. A mandate backed by power.

Here is the hard truth: in many places, policy shifted from persuasion to pressure. In the U.S., OSHA issued a vaccination or testing emergency temporary standard for large employers in November 2021, with the practical effect that noncompliant employees could be removed from the workplace, while employers faced large fines for violations.

Courts later blocked the OSHA mandate. In Canada, the federal government required vaccination for many federally regulated transportation workers and travelers for a period of time. In Italy, vaccination mandates applied to certain groups, with penalties including job suspension without pay and fines for some categories during certain periods. Austria passed a broader adult mandate in 2022, then suspended and later abolished it.

In other words, “coercion” was not an invention of internet critics. It was a real feature of many COVID-era policies. But one claim often travels with that truth, and it matters whether we treat it honestly.

“Imprisonment” for refusing vaccination was not a standard policy in most Western countries. Some countries used fines, work restrictions, or access restrictions. Some were prosecuted for related protest violence or other offenses, which is different from being jailed for a medical choice.

If we want to argue for liberty, we should not need exaggeration to make the point.

Another flashpoint was language itself. A portion of the public saw institutions “move the goalposts” on definitions and concluded, reasonably, that someone was shaping the story. The CDC did change wording in its public-facing definitions around vaccination and vaccines, shifting emphasis away from “immunity” language toward “protection” and “immune response,” which critics saw as an attempt to match messaging to real-world outcomes.

You can debate whether that edit was wise. You can argue it harmed trust by looking like a retroactive rewrite. But the deeper failure was not the edit. The deeper failure was the habit of presenting evolving science as fixed moral truth.

Now layer in the origins question. Trust does not survive secrecy. The origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain contested in public life because the evidence remains incomplete, and politics polluted the process.

A declassified U.S. Intelligence Community assessment concluded that both a natural origin and a laboratory-associated incident remain plausible, with differing views across agencies and low confidence for many conclusions.

WHO’s scientific advisory group has continued to evaluate the evidence, leaning toward zoonotic spillover as most consistent with available information, while still acknowledging gaps and the need for more cooperation and data.

That is the kind of uncertainty a mature society should be able to hold without turning neighbors into enemies.

We did not hold it well.

Instead, we treated caution as a moral defect. We treated questions as treason. We treated disagreement as a character flaw.

Some skepticism was reckless. Some people sold fantasies. Some turned legitimate uncertainty into confident certainty in the opposite direction. That happened. It should be named plainly. At the same time, much skepticism was reasonable and human. People asked about long-term effects because long-term data did not yet exist. People asked about safety signals because surveillance systems exist for a reason. People asked about myocarditis because myocarditis became a known rare adverse event, especially in certain demographics, after mRNA vaccination, and regulators updated warnings over time as data matured.

That is not paranoia. That is how responsible adults think when the stakes involve bodies, jobs, and children.

The institutional pattern that broke trust was simple.

First, leaders oversold certainty. Then, evidence evolved. Then, leaders revised guidance. Then, leaders acted as if revision proved virtue, not fallibility. Then, they demanded compliance anyway.

A society can survive error. It cannot survive contempt. When institutions treat ordinary citizens like disobedient children, they create exactly what they fear. Noncompliance. Cynicism. Conspiracy thinking. Not because people are stupid, but because people are relational. When you humiliate a person, you do not persuade him. You push him into a corner where identity becomes stronger than evidence.

That is where COVID became a failure of coexistence.

One camp learned to use fear as a social weapon. Another camp learned to use scorn as armor. Both camps learned a terrible habit. They learned that it is easier to win a tribe than to seek the truth.

The psychological mechanics are not mysterious.

Fear narrows attention. It makes people treat complexity as a threat. It makes them outsource thinking to authority. It also makes them treat dissent as danger, because dissent feels like it might reopen uncertainty, and uncertainty feels like death.

Moral certainty is addictive. It offers relief. It offers belonging. It offers an excuse to stop listening.

Social punishment works fast. The fear of ostracism changes behavior faster than a spreadsheet of data. If you want to move a crowd, label dissenters as “bad people.” If you want to prevent debate, attach shame to the act of questioning.

That is why COVID became a masterclass in manipulation, even when intentions were good. Many leaders believed they were protecting the public. Some were. But they also discovered that coercion is effective, and effectiveness can seduce even decent people.

Here is the tragedy: the people most likely to keep asking hard questions are often the people you most need in a crisis. They are the ones who notice second-order consequences. They are the ones who refuse slogans. They are the ones who stress-test plans before reality does it for you.

When you slap away the hands that reach out with caution, you train those people to stop offering it.

Over time, a pattern sets in. When care is punished, people learn to practice it quietly. When honest questions are mocked, they learn silence. When curiosity is framed as vice, they stop offering their judgment in public and reserve it for those who still value discernment.

This is not resentment. It is self-preservation. It is the deliberate setting of boundaries after repeated proof that wisdom offered in good faith will be rejected, distorted, or attacked. I have learned this lesson personally, not as an abstraction, but as a necessity.

I hate that the best parts of me now remain withheld from people who once might have benefited from them, and I know I am far from alone. This fractured social reality carries a high cost, one paid not just by those who withdraw but by everyone who loses the wisdom, care, and restraint that never gets shared.

A community that drives away its careful thinkers loses early warning signals. It loses honest feedback. It loses the friction that prevents bad decisions. It becomes brittle. It becomes easy to steer. It becomes easy to deceive, because nobody wants to be the one who raises their hand and gets crushed.

COVID showed what brittleness looks like. It looks like policies that ignore tradeoffs. It looks like communication that refuses nuance. It looks like institutions that confuse credibility with authority. It looks like a public that forgets that science is a method, not a priesthood.

So what should change?

Stop treating disagreement as a character flaw. Treat it as a signal that you may have a blind spot.

Stop confusing compliance with consent. A person can comply under threat and still be alienated, and alienation becomes future resistance.

Stop using totalizing language. “Safe” is not “risk-free.” “Effective” is not “perfect.” When you speak like a salesman, you will be treated like one later.

Build cultural habits that reward good-faith skepticism. Ask, “What would change your mind?” Then answer it yourself.

Demand transparency that matches the stakes. On origins, admit what is known and what is not. On vaccines, publish risk signals clearly, update guidance plainly, and treat the public like adults.

If we do not learn this, the next crisis will be worse – much worse, even if the pathogen is milder. It will be worse because trust will be lower.

COVID not only revealed the limits of medicine. It revealed the limits of our social character. Wisdom requires humility. Coexistence requires restraint. A free society requires the courage to let people question power without branding them as evil.

When we forget that, we not only risk bad policy, but we also risk losing the very people who could have helped us see clearly when it mattered most.

C. J. Garbo is a cybersecurity executive, former law enforcement professional, and public policy commentator focused on trust, risk, and institutional integrity. For more than two years during COVID, he questioned the dominant narrative almost daily on social media, motivated by concern for long-term health, liberty, and social cohesion rather than ideology. He writes from direct experience and a strong documented memory of how events, language, and public attitudes shifted in real time.

Garbo’s work examines the human cost of suppressing disagreement and the dangers that arise when fear replaces open inquiry.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.