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From TPM Reader DT …
I am a research active scientist and have been doing my best to “follow the science” with how I behave during the pandemic. It is another story entirely about how that has been hard, even with a very rigorous scientific training at the best institutions in my field.
What shouldn’t be forgotten here is the history of the current moment. During the first 10 months of the pandemic, we were essentially left out in the cold. With the notable exception of Dr. Fauci (who very understandably flubbed the mask question at first), where could you go to figure out what to do? It was nothing but quackery and disinterest from the White House, a weak, compromised, subservient CDC director, a scarf-wearing clown show of a coronavirus task force, and on and on and on. All the state and lower levels of government had to define and address the problem in their own ways, with many falling victim to politicization that came straight from the top. News journalism was largely on point from the good typical outfits, but there were many messaging issues in headlines and some stories that made many scientists roll their eyes, not to mention the misinformation peddled by the bad typical outfits.
From TPM Reader RE …
My wife and I are both fully vaccinated. She is having a hard time adopting new behaviors, and still seems truly frightened at the possibility of mutant strains taking over. Even though there is no evidence of this currently happening, it shows the lasting trauma people are feeling. But I don’t understand how Nate Silver’s tweet could get someone like JG so wound up. And I don’t understand why people get vaccinated if it doesn’t help ease their felt trauma. To start healing the wound will require behavioral adjustments. This is understandably uncomfortable for some people, but it’s necessary.
Kevin McCarthy has plenty of motives to cater to Trump and keep the congressional party united behind the Big Lie. But this report focuses on one of the most fascinating ones. McCarthy is apparently highly worried about being compelled to testify before any possible Jan 6th Commission. He should be, for two key reasons.
Power and Lies and Elise Stefanik
Aaron Blake of the Post dug up these statements from Elise Stefanik, the representative from New York State who is likely to replace Liz Cheney once she’s ejected from the House GOP leadership. Stefanik was a garden variety Upstate New York Republican before she hitched her wagon to Trump around 2018 and went all in with the Trump personality cult.
In the lead-up to the January 6th insurrection most congressional Republicans were careful to avoid repeating Trump’s most outrageous lies about a stolen election. They focused on the purported unconstitutionality of pandemic-related changes to election regulations. In other words, they weren’t directly claiming a stolen election in the sense of stuffed ballot boxes or dead voters or other similar stuff. They were arguing that states had exceeded their constitutional authority in doing things that making voting by mail easier. So those votes were illegitimate though not ‘fraudulent’ in the way most of us understand the term. This allowed them to back Trump’s claims of an illegitimate election by hanging their hat on a very weak constitutional argument rather than racist lies about ‘inner city’ vote fraud and other conspiracy theories.
But Stefanik wasn’t so careful.
From TPM Reader JS …
Strongly disagree. Science is science. You can’t wrap yourself in it to justify the shutdowns and then appeal to “trauma” to be for them.
And from TPM Reader MH …
Thank you, Josh, for your humane defense of people feeling cautious and traumatized, and for pointing out that most of the country is still not vaccinated.
The case numbers didn’t start dropping in New York until the first week of April. I didn’t get my “fully vaccinated” card until a month ago, and the data on variants and vaccine escape was also slow to arrive. We didn’t know *what* was keeping the cases up, but if you listened to the epidemiologists, they said “variants” a lot.
I’m not sure what the analogy is. But a new Post OpEd from Liz Cheney makes crystal clear that she is making her political fate – certainly her role in the Republican House leadership, which seems doomed – a test case for the future of the Republican party. Here’s the piece.
As I said in the podcast today, it would be simple enough for Cheney to ‘look forward and not back’ as they say. Not change her position on the disgraceful legacy of last winter but point to where she and her conference agree on opposing the Biden agenda. Rather she has deepened and sharpened her critique.
Where Things Stand: The Gang’s All Here
Some of Trump’s closest “Big Lie” allies along with one of his former lawyers are launching a new advocacy group to try to further cement former President Trump’s false claims about a stolen election into reality.
