Month: May 2020

Somebody doesn’t watch his own network:

“Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace said Friday he was surprised to see people “rallying” behind ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, arguing the former Trump administration official should not have lied to the FBI.

Wallace, who was speaking on Fox News, said Flynn erred in speaking to the FBI voluntarily shortly after President Trump was elected.

“Did the FBI play hardball? Yeah. Guess what? The FBI plays hardball. And guess what? If you are talking to the FBI — and a lot of lawyers would say don’t talk to them unless you have to — don’t lie,” he said.

Wallace’s comments came a day after Trump told reporters Thursday that Flynn has been “essentially exonerated” by new documents unsealed in the criminal case against the former aide.

“He’s in the process of being exonerated. If you look at those notes from yesterday, that was total exoneration,” Trump said. “These were dirty, filthy cops at the top of the FBI.”

Wallace said he was also surprised that Trump suggested Flynn might return to the administration.

“I was kind of surprised that the president said yesterday, ‘Well, maybe I’ll bring him back to the White House.’ It was the president, before any legal case was brought, who fired Flynn because Flynn had lied about his conversation with the Russian ambassador to the vice president, Mike Pence,” Wallace said.

“Mike Pence came on ‘Fox News Sunday’ just before the inauguration in January of 2016 and said there was no discussion of that. And it turns out he was basing that on what Flynn had told him and that Flynn had lied to him,” Wallace added. “So I’m not quite sure I understand why people are all rallying to Flynn’s case.”

I appreciate the fact that Wallace is sticking to his old-school conservative worldview. It’s rare enough. But really, Chris, where have you been? Do you not watch your own network? Or listen to what the president of the United States says every day?

This sort of questioning by law enforcement is known to anyone who even watched re-runs of Law and Order, much less anyone who’s followed various crimes and scandals over the years. There was nothing even remotely unusual about what the FBI did when they questioned Flynn. After all, it wasn’t just those phone calls they were interested in. He was also involved in a plot to kidnap a foreign national in the US and send him overseas — for which he had been paid big bucks by a foreign country, while he was advising the Trump campaign. And he was the National Security Adviser!

Lying to the FBI is illegal, even for Donald Trump flunkies. Or, at least, it used to be. Today, they are all under the protection of Attorney General William Barr.

Forget remdesivir. She’s sticking with the snake oil — and so are the MAGAs:

Over three weeks ago, hydroxychloroquine was all the rage in MAGA world, despite flawed and scattered evidence about whether the drug could help cure coronavirus. Now there is another drug, remdesivir, with positive early scientific data.

Much of MAGA world wants little to do with it.

At first, it may seem like a head-scratching response. President Donald Trump’s base has been quick to trumpet any potential solutions to the coronavirus pandemic — especially those Trump himself promotes — regardless of the red flags from medical experts. But with remdesivir, it’s the Trump-boosting pundits who are raising the red flags, even as the president expresses optimism.

Indeed, the same segment of the right that claimed scientists and the media were deliberately downplaying hydroxychloroquine in order to hurt Trump’s standing are now the ones downplaying remdesivir. On Fox News, Laura Ingraham suggested that remdesivir, as a newer drug being produced by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, could be unsafe and expensive. Those who initially helped raise the profile of hydroxychloroquine raised doubts about the remdesivir studies.

The unexpected reaction appears to stem from the differences in how the two drugs came into the public spotlight. Hydroxychloroquine bubbled up through the MAGA grassroots — little-known investors promoted it online, got on Fox News and suddenly the president was talking about it from the White House. Remdesivir’s progress came through a government-funded trial that had the blessing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the bête noire of Trump hardliners who blame the government’s top infectious disease expert for undermining the president and causing unnecessary economic damage with his social-distancing guidelines.

Remdesivir’s connection to a pharmaceutical company also taps into suspicions on the right that corporate executives are trying to rake in huge profits from the coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine, on the other hand, is already widely available in generic form.

These factors were likely enough to turn off people who had been using hydroxychloroquine as a political rallying cry, said David Rapp, a psychology professor at Northwestern University who studies how misinformation shapes beliefs and memory.

The hydroxychloroquine boosters, he said, “might find the alternative idea as not being pure, in the sense that it doesn’t come from Trump. It’s coming from other sources that they might not trust.”

The MAGA base’s suspicions about remdesivir began shortly after Fauci on Wednesday announced the results of a government-sponsored clinical trial that showed that the drug shortened recovery time for coronavirus patients, calling it a “clear-cut, positive” development in the fight against the coronavirus. Fauci also made clear that this is a first step; more research needs to be done into this and other potential treatments.

That night, Ingraham devoted a segment of her show that night arguing on behalf of hydroxychloroquine. Ingraham first suggested that remdesivir could present dangers, urging restraint until government regulators like the Food and Drug Administration could thoroughly review the treatment.

“It hasn’t been approved by the FDA,” she said. “They might do emergency authorization. Hydroxychloroquine was approved decades ago.”

The FDA — which Fauci does not run — in fact did move swiftly. On Friday it issued an emergency-use authorization to help patients get quicker access to remdesivir, the first antiviral to show promise against Covid-19 infection.

Ingraham added that remdesivir, as a new drug, could be expensive, whereas “hydroxychloroquine is obviously cheap and already readily available.” She then brought out a doctor who defended hydroxychloroquine as “safe” and expressed worries that remdesivir, originally developed to fight Ebola, could be dangerous.

Trump is right about one thing. For MAGA, it’s all about him.

I wonder if there are non-cultists who still treat Ingraham like a normal person. She is the Angel of Death.

Update:

If you’re wondering which of Trump’s scientific experts are telling him that the virus is just going to disappear look no further than Laura “AOD” Ingraham

This piece in the conservative Never-Trump Bulwark has an interesting angle on Trump’s solipsism:

By the time the president completes his typical Sunday rage-tweeting, it is often difficult to pick what was risible and separate it from what was laughable, especially since, in the Venn diagram of Trumpism, those circles are converging. But last Sunday’s show featured a claim that should be remembered precisely because it is so easy to forget. Reacting to a story about his pandemic work habits that appeared in the New York Times—a newspaper he has made a public display of saying he does not read but to which he responds with suspicious frequency

The people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am the hardest working President in history. I don’t know about that, but I am a hard worker and have probably gotten more done in the first 3 1/2 years than any President in history. The Fake News hates it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2020

Never mind the “people say” device, or the fact that the only thing more unpalatable to Trump’s critics than him binge-watching Fox & Friends might be what he would actually do if he spent more time in the office.

The real problem is his rush to the superlative: He is eager to measure his actions in historical terms. (The least plausible of Trump’s claims are often made with the most rhetorical force. See “genius, stable.”) The issue is not the fabulism itself—tall tales are part of politics, even if Trump tells, to use his dialect, the tallest ever—but rather the nature of it. Trump operates outside of time in an argot that dissolves the shared memories on which a republic depends. He lives in an eternal now. This may be fine for individuals—or at least for adolescents who have not yet grasped the fleeting nature of man’s existence. But it is an insufficient foundation for constitutional government. 

Yeah.

He goes on to catalog some of the more egregious examples and there are hundreds more. And he explains why it’s so important for a president to have some sense of historical perspective. It’s quite interesting .

I will just add that this is the personality trait I loathe the most in Trump, followed closely by the blaming and whining about how “unfair” everything is. Put these together and you have a profoundly immature personality, someone so stunted that he truly believes he is the center of the universe, like a toddler. That’s not hyperbole. It’s actually the case.

And again, what makes me so stunned, even to this day, is not really him — it’s the people who obviously admire these personality traits. I can’t get past it. Are nearly half the people like this and I failed to see it all these years? Or are they so witless that they can’t see how pathologically incompetent this makes him?

I don’t know, but I suspect I will spend the rest of my life pondering that question. I’ll never get over it.

The following is a twitter thread by New York Magazine’s David Wallace Wells, based upon his article:

What the Coronavirus Models Can’t See The numbers of new coronavirus infections and deaths from the disease are surpassing projections even during lockdowns. With some of the lockdowns already beginning to end, those numbers are likely t…https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/what-the-coronavirus-models-cant-see.html

“On April 20, less than two weeks ago, Donald Trump predicted the ultimate coronavirus death toll would be between 50,000 and 60,000. At the time, the bet, however grotesque morally, seemed relatively safe politically.” (1/x)

“But on Wednesday, the total death toll crossed 60,000, on a day that represented a new peak in single-day American deaths from COVID-19: 2,700.” 

“Though the public narrative is that the country has turned the corner and gotten a handle on things, enough to begin slowly ‘opening up,’ the data tells a different story.” 

“A new daily peak means that even if deaths declined as rapidly now as they grew earlier this spring, when in a month total deaths grew from 3,834 to 62,860, we would be due for at least as many more deaths as we’ve had to this point. In other words, another 60,000 people.” 

“A peak is not an end; it is, in optimal circumstances, a midpoint.” 

“Considering we just reached that new peak, it is not a foolproof assumption that deaths won’t grow again. And even if we do assume it, there are many reasons to think the decline from that peak will be slower than the ascent—meaning considerably more than 60,000 more deaths.” 

“Through April, the projections from epidemiological models kept shrinking, producing a wave of ‘good news’ updates and a whole narrative among COVID skeptics that the projections were criminally alarmist. But the death figures have simply not cooperated with that optimism.” 

“The IMHE model, in particular, has come under increasing criticism — ‘It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited,’ Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch told Stat News.” 

“Earlier in April, IMHE had revised its estimates downward, first from 93,531 to 81,766, then to 60,415. More recently, its projections have ticked back up with a present estimate of 72,433 deaths by August 4. If the country stays on pace, it will hit that number by May 4.” 

“For the last two weeks, the country has been on a roughly flat trajectory of 2,000 deaths per day. If it stays on that plateau through August 4, it would mean not 12,000 more deaths, but 180,000. And the pandemic wouldn’t simply end on August 4 just because the modeling does.” 

“Of course, we may well not stay on that pace, but decline. How quickly?”

 “According to a survey of five major models, all project a quite rapid decline. In fact, a model based at the University of Texas now says with 100 percent certainty that the country has passed its peak — this despite the fact that just on Wednesday we reached a new peak…” 

“…and despite the likelihood that no more than 5 percent of the country, at most, has been exposed to the disease.” 

“So, what is happening? Why is it that all efforts to project the future of the pandemic seem unable to see more than a week into the future? Why are they almost unanimous in projecting a precipitous decline that is almost every day contradicted by the number of new deaths?”

 “There are two big explanations. The first is that even under present conditions, in which the spread of infection is being dramatically constrained by shutdowns, the disease is not behaving as we expected.”

“It takes a little less than a week from the time of infection to the arrival of real symptoms; another week or so until those symptoms become serious enough to require hospitalization; and a week or two from there until those who ultimately die will die.” 

“That means the full life cycle of the disease, as we understand it, is about a month. A perfectly effective quarantine would therefore reduce practically to zero the number of new cases within a month of being implemented.” 

“By March 30, the overwhelming majority of U.S. states had issued stay-at-home directions. Which means that by April 30, one month later, anyone who had caught the disease before the lockdowns began should have already passed through the entire life cycle of the disease…” 

“…and that all the new cases we are currently seeing are the result of infections since the shutdown. On April 30, after a month in which new cases ranged between 25,000 and 30,000, there were 29,500 new reported cases.” 

“It is not entirely clear what accounts for this. It could be there is some feature of the disease we do not yet understand, or something about how long it incubates which we have failed to recognize… ” 

“It is possible the disease remains infectious even after a patient has recovered, perhaps for a significant amount of time. … ” 

“It is possible that sheltering at home is a flawed quarantining method, since family members can infect one another, and that some meaningful share of the new cases come from within quarantines. …” 

“It is possible that some meaningful share comes from within hospitals, with doctors and nurses and administrators all serving as vectors of the disease. It is possible that some meaningful share comes from the 50 million exposed front-line workers.” 

“Quite likely, a few of these factors, and possibly all, are contributing, to some degree. Together, they are preventing anything resembling a decline of deaths or cases as rapid as the ascent a month or so ago.” 

“Instead, under conditions that you might have thought, in theory, would bring the caseload close to zero in this amount of time, national deaths and caseloads have merely flattened out.” “But there is a second, more fundamental problem with nearly all the models you may have encountered, in one form of media or another over the last few months.”

 “Each is processing data—positive cases, hospitalizations, deaths—produced under those extraordinarily stringent social conditions. Each is generating a curve based on that data, which is to say, those conditions—the lockdown from which you are probably reading this story.”

 “Seeing a flattening in the number of cases or deaths, the models project a decline, even if the flattening is not a function of the disease itself but the extraordinary social conditions we have imposed on it.” 

“This is fine, so far as it goes, because it is useful to know the trajectory of infection under conditions of quarantine if you are under conditions of quarantine. But it only goes so far — as far as the quarantine goes.” 

“And that reopening is already starting, which means the conditions which have produced those elegant (and encouraging) curves are ending. Georgia’s reopening has already produced a thousand new cases in a span of 24 hours and is expected to double deaths by August.” Other places could see an even more dramatic spike with only a partial, or “midway,” return to nonessential business.

Research from @PolicyLabCHOP projects how “a midway return of normal travel to non-essential businesses” creates a giant spike of #covid19 cases this summer. Here’s the projection for New Haven County, CT. You can check your own hometown h/t @PeterHotez https://policylab.chop.edu/covid-lab-mapping-covid-19-your-community …

“Even in those states where there has been relatively little spread, the reopening is taking place from a much, much higher baseline of current infection than is optimal—or, I think, assumed. Take Texas, for instance.

#Texas reopening today

“And while some states are taking a more cautious approach, the disease isn’t very easily quarantined. ‘That’s like having a peeing section in the swimming pool,’ as Seattle public-health official Jeffrey Duchin put it recently. ‘It doesn’t stay where you started.’” 

“In all likelihood, the future course of the disease won’t follow an unmitigated trajectory — at least some amount of additional testing will allow us to control the spread a little more effectively, and presumably treatments will arrive that will at least lessen lethality.” 

“And so it is possible, perhaps even probable, that we will not again exceed the peak of daily deaths reached just this week, even after ‘opening up.'” 

“But while they have dominated talk about the state of COVID so far, peaks are less important the height than the area underneath the curve as it stretches out not just through the summer but into the fall and possibly into 2021 and even 2022.”

 “‘That’s the risk we face here,’ Scott Gottlieb said this week, ‘that this doesn’t really go away because we don’t get rid of this round. That the mitigation steps weren’t quite robust enough, as painful as they were, and we continue to have spread right into the fall.'” 

“On April 30, NBC News reported the federal government, even while signaling optimism about the course of the disease, had ordered 100,000 new body bags.”

And in case you were wondering how we are really doing compared to the rest of the world:

The US compared with the rest of the world, May 1st, #COVID19
8 times as many expected confirmed cases
6.5 times as many expected deaths
based on population pic.twitter.com/DtqHm2M4cP

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) May 1, 2020

That is a bracing read to say the least. But I’m tired of lies and happy talk. I want to prepare myself for the fact that this may be bad for a long time.

I was watching the BBC a couple of days ago and they interviewed people in different countries about what they are seeing from the US. More than one said we looked like a third world country with long lines for food and bodies piled in freezer trucks. And we do.

But most Americans are safe in their homes waiting his thing out, uncomfortable and stressed, nervous about the future. Taking the Trump attitude of “it’s just going to go away” won’t help us.

…When they find out that they can’t force most people out of their houses with magical thinking?

Steve M at NMMNB makes a good point about the MAGA “protests” demanding that the governors end their stay at home orders. Will people just start streaming back to the malls and the restaurants? Good luck with that.

For the people who think the lockdowns are all that stands between us and a thriving economy, how do you explain this chart?

Angry Fox-addled protestors in Michigan and elsewhere may have no fear of the virus, but normal people do, especially if they’re older. The president and the plutocrats want the economy opened, and in much of America they’ll get their wish, even though we’re still experiencing more than 2,000 deaths a day from COVID-19, at a time when the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted we’d be at 1,266.

So the right can force the economy open, but many people won’t venture out to participate

Of course they won’t. Many businesses won’t open either. Steve M. contemplateswhat happens then and I confess I hadn’t thought of it:

What happens then? The anti-lockdown propagandists will begin to say that anyone who’s reluctant to shop is a cowardly liberal who wants America to fail. On the left, we’re used to being called enemies of the people. But they’re about to start demonizing the healthy-but-frightened elderly, as well as people with small children who worry about being lost to them for weeks in intensive care, or worse. They’re about to demonize anyone who has okay odds of surviving Russian Roulette with the virus but decides not to take the chance.

Shopping will be patriotism. Legitimate fear will be treason. They’re not messing around.

This will not surprise me. The GOP governors and politicians just want to be able to deny unemployment insurance to people who refuse to risk their health. But they can’t force people to go out . Right now, the businesses that are required to work at 25% capacity (something that will drive them to bankruptcy as well) may fill their tables with MAGA for a while. But there aren’t enough of them to bring the economy “back to normal.” When that becomes obvious, there will likely be a backlash against people who refuse to pretend that everything’s just fine.

Here’s a phase one:

The shopping as patriotism isn’t unprecedented. After 9/11, George W. Bush told everyone to go out and shop. Shopping is how Republicans show their love of country.

Watching workers go back to their jobs in life-threatening conditions to serve the economy punctuates the degree to which American myths are killing us. If the behavior of the acting president’s base seems cultish, it is because cultish behavior permeates the culture. A “deep sickness,” Digby called it the other day.

I frequently refer to the Midas cult, those of a certain economic class who view every human interaction as a potential for-profit transaction, who behave as though anything that might be turned into gold (profit) should be, especially not-for-profit public services such as education. For the Midas cult, anything less than private percentage off the top is a crime against capitalism.

My friend Anat Shenker-Osorio regularly challenges notions popular among the less well-off that reduce human beings to cogs in a for-profit economy configured to serve others and not them. She refers instead to the American “cult of hard work” that forces people to choose between risking their lives and, you know, eating. The two cults are cousins.

Are people aware that massive numbers of Europeans – under totally ordinary circumstances – all don't work for several weeks? They call this August.

— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) March 24, 2020

It is disturbing watching people indoctrinated in those beliefs take to the streets (some with weapons) and risk contracting a deadly disease they might bring home to their families for the chance to throw their bodies again into the economy’s furnaces.

What’s even more disturbing is how they can do so after watching penny-pinching deficit scolds in Congress dole out hundreds of billions to keep investors afloat, again, barely a decade after doing it in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Anger over that atrocity supposedly paved the way for Donald Trump the Swamp-drainer and was just as quickly forgotten.

“Let us work! Let us serve! Let us die!”

As 22M Americans file for unemployment and scramble to put food on the table, America’s billionaires got $282 billion richer in less than a month.

This socialism for the rich, harsh capitalism for the rest is despicable in normal times—in times of crisis, it’s morally repugnant.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 27, 2020

In a series of March tweets, Shenker-Osorio critiqued how easily we reinforce the right’s “who loves the economy best” narrative:

Every time we argued that a program would “grow the economy,” we helped the opposition cement the view that this is the singular objective of policymaking.

Every time we touted raising wages as a means to have people be “customers in our stores,” we reaffirmed that our value is as consumers and not humans.

Every time we led with what a great “investment” it is to, say, feed children, we primed expectation that how we treat each other ought be based on financial returns.

Paycheck workers could be demanding that their government support them and their families during this natural disaster with as much zeal as they do the economy, but no. They’ve been conditioned to believe that only deadbeat Irresponsibles accept government “handouts.” The fact that self-described job-creators among the nation’s wealthiest are the first at the trough does not register. Protesters could be demanding their government provide them the same kind of concierge service, but no.

Several European governments have concluded it is “better to pay up and keep people on payrolls than risk economic disruption from mass layoffs.” To “mitigate the social and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic,” the government of Bahrain decided it would pay the salaries of 100,000 registered private sector employees for three three months beginning in April.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-WA) Paycheck Guarantee Act resembles actions taken in Denmark and would cover an employer’s base payroll for up to three months (up to $100,000 per worker). Don’t count on seeing it come up for a vote.

Instead, the acting president urges workers to feed themselves to the virus, to march back to work processing meats so His economy might live.

(For a look into just how out of scale economic inequality is in this country, I invite you to scroll right in this graphic: Wealth shown to scale. h/t SR)

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

when you're a 'guin you're a 'guin all the way….

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 29, 2020

The Denver Zoo staff brought out Chilean flamingo chicks for a walk around the zoo. Zookeepers let them out of their enclosures for physical therapy and exercise. pic.twitter.com/vsRruTXtOL

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) April 30, 2020

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday announced Canada is banning assault-style weapons.

Trudeau cited numerous mass killings in the country, including one of its deadliest that occurred in Nova Scotia in April and resulted in the deaths of 22 people.

“Canadians deserve more than thoughts and prayers,” Trudeau said.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has tighter gun control laws than the United States.

Meanwhile, just down the road a piece:

Police and staff aren’t engaging w/ protesters and the crowd is angry pic.twitter.com/2OOJC7eQl2

— Anna Liz Nichols (@annaliznichols) April 30, 2020

Red coats? What’s he talking about?

Aaaand:

The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire. These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2020

American carnage …

https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1256287520775639041

That’s a good one, I have to say.

Apparently, this lawyer is the guy Mike Huckabee sued for hurting his feelings. He’s got some cojones.

Here in California, Governor Newsom did the opposite. Orange County, just south of LA which is the epicenter of the state’s outbreak, opened the beaches last weekend and a bunch of Los Angelenos went down there and flouted the social distancing guidelines likely bring more cases to Orange County and contracting more to bring back home. So, he closed Orange County beaches down this weekend. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I just can’t anymore …

Views on how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic have become increasingly polarized, yet another political issue that for many culture war combatants is filtered through an ideological lens. The left has been almost uniformly — and loudly — in favor of sacrificing many personal liberties in exchange for containing the virus’ spread. The right has been divided, but the vocal activist wing of conservatism that has enormous influence on social media and Fox News, has been far more willing to attack the various infringements on where people can go and what they have to wear.

The mask has become the ultimate symbol of this new cultural and political divide.

For progressives, masks have become a sign that you take the pandemic seriously and are willing to make a personal sacrifice to save lives. Prominent people who don’t wear them are shamed and dragged on Twitter by lefty accounts. On the right, where the mask is often seen as the symbol of a purported overreaction to the coronavirus, mask promotion is a target of ridicule, a sign that in a deeply polarized America almost anything can be politicized and turned into a token of tribal affiliation.

The cleavage was made clear this week when Mike Pence toured the Mayo Clinic without wearing a mask. Pictures from the event showed the maskless vice president surrounded by doctors and patients with face coverings. The story dominated cable news. Liberal hosts shamed Pence for setting a bad example or behaving recklessly. Conservatives attacked the left’s mask obsession as another example of the creeping nanny state.

Laura Ingraham warned that “social control over large populations is achieved through fear and intimidation and suppression of free thought” and “conditioning the public through propaganda is also key, new dogmas replace good old common sense.”

But the pro-mask voices won, at least for now. On Thursday, Pence toured a ventilator factory in Indiana while wearing a surgical mask.

In Washington, mask-wearing has become deeply political and inconsistent. The White House is divided along some familiar lines. In early April, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first issued its recommendation that Americans wear “cloth face coverings” — because surgical masks are still in short supply — Trump immediately blurted out that he wasn’t interested.

“With the masks, it is going to be a voluntary thing,” Trump said at a White House briefing on April 3. “You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I am choosing not to do it. It may be good. It is only a recommendation, voluntary.”

[…]

“It’s a personal choice. That’s the whole point of the guidelines in the first place. If you want to wear one, you can wear one,” said one White House official. “It’s not a conscious effort to try and raise the alarm or not raise the alarm.”

The virtue signaling seems to have spilled over to Capitol Hill. During a vote on the latest coronavirus relief package last week, POLITICO reported that about a dozen Republicans declined to wear masks on the House floor. One of the maskless lawmakers, Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, said he wasn’t making an ideological statement and that members were “spaced out” on the floor, precluding the need for covering his face.

When asked whether it was a cultural or ideological statement, another maskless Republican, Ralph Abraham, a veterinarian turned family doctor from Louisiana, gave an emphatic “Nooo, nooo!”

Not all of the maskless behavior on the right seems ideological. Some members just seem to be struggling to adapt to new rules like everyone else. A POLITICO reporter spotted one masked Democratic member who actually removed his mask when he encountered a colleague, and they posed for a picture together.

But there is clearly a growing partisan split. Democratic leaders in the House have made more of a point about wearing masks on camera than Republican leaders. Democrat Jim Clyburn donned one at a news conference on Thursday with Nancy Pelosi, who generally uses her scarf as a mask. None of the top three House GOP leaders wore masks at an outdoor news conference at the Capitol last week.

The mask divide is spilling into policymaking. Congressional Democrats, backed by flight attendant unions, have been leading a campaign to force the use of masks on airplanes, which the Trump administration has resisted. (In the absence of a mandate, Delta, American, United, JetBlue and Frontier have all recently adopted a mask policy for passengers.)

Some people seem as worked up about face coverings as others are about tax policy or abortion. In response to a recent POLITICO report about the Pence imbroglio, one person on Twitter wrote, “Get over it, I don’t wear a mask either and I NEVER WILL!”

Wearing a mask is not “virtue signaling.” It’s trying not to kill someone in case you have the virus and don’t know it. Stopping a pandemic requires people to make some sacrifices. This is the very least anyone can do. It’s not a big deal, it’s not hard, anyone can do it. I honestly can’t believe it’s even controversial.

But once again it exposes something fetid and decayed at the heart of American conservatism. They literally don’t care if people die.

But what else is new? These are the same people who had an epic temper tantrum when the government tried to ensure that everyone could buy affordable health insurance. It’s just who they are. And it’s why I can’t find it in myself to be empathetic because they feel so marginalized. it’s no excuse for being a nihilistic death cultist.