KAROL MARKOWICZ: Big bureaucracy fumbled COVID and our faith in institutions: Americans will never again trust what our health agencies tell us.

While we reminisce on the “before times,” it’s equally important to recall the beliefs that had been shattered by these two COVID-19 years.

I was a small government conservative, sure, but I somehow still believed in our health agencies. The people were panicking, and buying toilet paper en-masse, but I was certain our health officials had spent decades preparing for a pandemic such as this. They would lead the way on sharing information between countries, carefully discarding information from totalitarian regimes like China, and would prioritize returning us to normal as soon as possible.

In retrospect, it’s crazy that I had such faith. I didn’t think I was naive but it turns out I was. I had generally counted on the government, certainly the federal government, to handle things poorly. I was raised on the Ronald Reagan quote “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”

And still, I believed. This was important. This was their moment to shine. They couldn’t let us down now.

They did not shine. They did let us down.

No matter how little faith you have in them, it’s still probably too much.