Brad Dechert and his wife, Jennifer Schickram, believe the threat posed by the coronavirus has been overstated. Credit…Mark Makela for The New York Times
The latest sojourn into Trump country reveals that they are still a bunch of jerks:
Entering Ted’s Bar and Grill on Monday, Tim Girvin briefly slid on a “Trump 2020” face mask, before whisking it off to join friends at a table for lunch.
He said those few seconds were the only time he wore a mask all day.
“I have my own business and I don’t have anybody wear a mask in my business,” said Mr. Girvin, a used-car dealer. “I don’t buy into it. When you look at the facts, with how many people die of influenza every year. Obesity kills more people than the Wuhan virus does.”
On the day that President Trump defiantly left the hospital where he was being treated for a coronavirus infection and returned to a White House that appears to be one of Washington’s most contagious hot spots, backers of the president in rural Pennsylvania showed no signs of questioning their own defiance of experts’ advice on how to limit the virus’s spread.
In the Lebanon Valley east of Harrisburg, where support for Mr. Trump remains particularly strong, the president’s failure to protect his family and inner circle from the virus was not seen as a reflection on his inability to protect Americans, as the death toll passed 210,000.
On the contrary, Trump loyalists echoed misinformation that the president has spread for much of the year, as he has sought to minimize the threat of the virus to aid his re-election.
Voters who support the president falsely claimed that data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths and cases were wrong, that getting the virus was no worse than getting the flu, and that it was introduced and kept in the spotlight only by Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponents.
“Who do you think brought this into the country?” said Mr. Girvin, who has shared posts on Facebook that independent fact checkers have labeled misinformation. “Joe Biden has enough nerve to say Donald Trump’s killing people? No. The far-left liberals are causing this. The Pelosis, the Soroses and all these people, that’s who caused it. And I wish them all the worst.”
As interviews with Mr. Girvin and others make clear, Mr. Trump has managed to politicize science during a public health crisis, something that historians will likely look back on as a defining aspect of the coronavirus pandemic.
Scoffing at masks, social distancing and crowd avoidance — all measures recommended by health experts, including in the Trump administration — has become a test of loyalty for fervent supporters of the president, who mocked Mr. Biden’s masks during their debate last week and, on returning to the White House on Monday from the hospital, ripped his off, despite being highly contagious.
Brad Dechert, a Trump supporter who visited a Walmart here on Monday without a mask, said, “I like my freedom” on leaving the store, and pronounced Covid-19 as “nothing more than a flu, really.’’
Pennsylvania requires face coverings indoors in all locations open to the public, and most businesses, including Walmart, post notices warning patrons not to enter without one. But a store greeter identified by her vest as a health ambassador said she had no power to stop the 10 percent of shoppers who refuse to cover up.
“Younger people’s more safe,” said Mr. Dechert, 31. “Older people have an issue. Nobody batted an eye for the flu. Now all of a sudden, it’s an election year — Covid.”
Mr. Dechert, a volunteer firefighter who served overseas with the National Guard, said he thought the C.D.C.’s count of 209,000 deaths from Covid-19 as of Monday was grossly inflated.
“Say I have it and I get tested five times, that’s five new cases,” he said. “I know for sure, through E.M.T.s, they count it separately.” (This misconception, spread on social media, has been rebutted; the C.D.C. reports total cases and total tests separately.)
His wife, Jennifer Schickram, 33, a homemaker, said with equal conviction that health providers exaggerate cases to collect higher payments. “They want the extra benefits that are going to come out of listing people as Covid,” she said.
“We all die at some point,” Mr. Dechert added. “So, hey, I grew up in this America where you could have freedom, go out about your own business. Cool. Hey, if I get it and I die, awesome.”
[…]
Ms. Jones said she recently sold a child care business because so many parents were working from home that demand for her services plummeted.
The president “had one of the greatest economies going before it happened and the liberal left does not like that,” she said. “They couldn’t impeach him. They couldn’t do anything about the Russia collusion. So then they were colluding with China, they bring in the virus.”
Asked where she got her news, she said, again gesturing to her young niece: “I was just telling her, don’t go to the news sources. Go to different podcasts.”
She mentioned podcasts by the conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager. In April, Mr. Prager called coronavirus lockdowns “the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.’
God help us.
I find this to be more and more infuriating. These people are willfully ignorant at this point. And while it’s true that they have a right to kill themselves, as stupid (and expensive) as that is, they really do not have a right to kill other people which they are either too stupid or too callous to be concerned with. How can we be expected to show such people compassion and respect as fellow citizens?
I just don’t want to hear any more about how these people have been overlooked or disregarded. We’ve seen their true colors. They only care about themselves. In fact, they don’t even do that.