Chaffetz & Saphier: Widespread COVID panic – here's how the left misused science to gain political power

Once upon a time, national crises served as a call to unity – a time to come together in service and sympathy. Yet, in 2020, America's political class mastered the art of leveraging a crisis to amplify divisions and justify power grabs. It worked.

Controversy and skepticism have surrounded many facets of the disaster from the origin of the virus and concealment of information by China to school closures, wearing facemasks, treatments, vaccines and more. Welcome to disaster liberalism – a means by which politicians use the threat of an impending crisis to justify enacting unpopular or unconstitutional policies.  Partisan foes pushed forth their political agendas to gain power by inappropriately claiming science as their motivation. This has hopelessly muddied the water, divided the country, and the knee-jerk anti-Trumpism made it all worse.