One thing has become crystal clear in recent days: Public health and science are not so much about actual health and science. On the contrary, “public health” and “science” are really code words for telling people to shut up and do what supposed “experts” — usually with left-wing agendas — tell us to do. Overly restrictive shutdowns based on this agenda denote a massive betrayal of trust that is perhaps worse than Spygate and the IRS scandal.

Why? Because while those abuses of power were limited in scope, the lockdowns to contain the COVID-19 pandemic — lockdowns urged by experts like 35-year Beltway resident Dr. Anthony Fauci — were arguably the most massive regulatory taking in American history. These measures didn’t come without costs of their own.

To stop a pandemic, many addicts who needed support went without. Some have likely relapsed and are back in the throes of their disease. Others are in the morgue after a fatal overdose. Those people are no less dead than George Floyd, the 17 people killed during rioting, or the 111,000 Americans who died of the Wuhan coronavirus.

To buy time to stockpile medical equipment and build ventilators, we shut down many small businesses — and people saw their dreams die. For some, rebuilding will be very difficult. For others, the total loss of a dream will send them spiraling into a mental-health crisis that could very well end with a death of despair in the form of suicide. They, too, will be no less dead.

In short, many Americans made sacrifices in the fight to minimize the pandemic. We took public-health experts at their word that those measures were necessary, even when fellow Americans were hurting and desperately trying to draw the country’s attention to their plight, much to the disdain of the political and Hollywood elites. When those wealthy elites criticized desperate Americans, many went along, even as serious questions arose about the accuracy of the models.

Then came the riots after the death of George Floyd. We were greeted by 1,300 public health experts who literally blessed those protests — “a perfect setup,” in the words of Dr. Fauci, for spreading the virus like mildew — all the while taking potshots at those who protested the lockdowns.

In other words, public health was used as the pretext to discriminate on the basis of politics. There had been warning signs (see the perversion of “public health” to target our Second Amendment rights), but that research was just an effort to change policy. This time, we locked down the country.

A rightfully angry Jonah Goldberg pointed out that if the Wuhan coronavirus doesn’t make a major comeback after these protests, “no one will ever take these people seriously again, and for understandable reasons.” We’ll get lectured about denying science, but the scientists who played favorites will be the ones who will deserve the blame for the loss of credibility.