Who is that unmasked man?

“Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer.” The Monkees 1967

Science works.

At last, the truth has been unmasked. Science works.

It’s as plain as the nose on your face … the nose I’ve seen for the first time in darn near a year.

The CDC says so. Dr. Fauci’s going along with it and Governor Walz agrees. The vaccine’s working. It’s safe to go out to a ballgame again.

Safe to visit the grandkids. Go out for a burger. Shake hands with folks we haven’t seen in months…heck, it’s even safe to give ‘em a hug.

So when you buy your tickets to the state fair, give a little nod, say a little thank you to the thousands of folks hunkered down over microscopes and test tubes who did the work that made the shot that makes it possible for life to go back to something like it was.

All because of the vaccine.

All because of science.

We might want to think about that for a minute. For all the panic, prayers and politicking that went on for the last 18 months, it was the men and women in their white coats and lab rats that finally found the key to putting the kibosh on the COVID pandemic.

So long as we use it, that is.

Therein lies the rub. It seems a whole bunch of folks have gotten science mixed up with Scientology and decided they’re not going to believe in that.

Well folks, there’s a difference. Scientology gave us a lot of People magazine stories about B-list celebrities; science took us to the moon, eradicated smallpox, and gave us Post-it notes and Teflon frying pans.

When it comes to figuring stuff out, science works.

How it works, some folks seem to have trouble with.

Y’see, scientists are wrong a lot. In fact, they’ve been wrong about just about everything, until that is, they get it right. When they find out they were wrong, they change their mind and go on from there. Science is a method, not a set of things to believe in.

That’s why your eighth grade science textbook didn’t include phlogiston, the aether, or spontaneous generation to explain fire, light or where houseflies come from.

That’s why, when evidence and observation indicated that wearing masks significantly reduced the transmission of COVID 19, epidemiologists advocated everyone wear a mask – regardless of what they might have thought or said previously.

L. Ron Hubbard published Dianetics in 1950 and good Scientologists still hold to every word in it – just as written.

If scientists were still stuck where they were in 1950, computers would be running on vacuum tubes and polio would be epidemic every summer.

Instead we’ve got iPhones in our pockets and a vaccine to keep the virus at bay. All because folks were willing to say “I don’t know,” “Let’s look into that,” and “I was wrong. I’ve changed my mind.” Folks who were willing to admit they make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Willing to keep getting it wrong until they got it right.

And if that works for science – and GPS navigation and flat screen TVs testify that it does – how much better off would we be if the same process were applied to politics and public policy. If a leader who dared admit to having learned something and thereafter changed his mind was given credit rather than castigated as a heretic and a flip-flopper? What if our policy decisions were based upon evidence, experiment and observation rather than ideology and inherited belief? What if we were to acknowledge that the world has changed since 1950 and respond in way that address those changes?

Who knows? Like the COVID vaccine, it just might work.