Doug Badger

If the various claims about masks and distancing and lockdowns and all the rest had produced demonstrably different results in the states where they were tried, we might argue that having a uniform approach would have been better. But the experience has been quite otherwise, and I think that's why you're beginning to see even governors who have been very supportive of restrictions and have implemented enforced restrictions are rapidly retreating from them.

When you politicize things and start to say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and unvaccinated people are crowding sick patients out of hospital beds, you don't persuade unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. That much is pretty clear, but you do deepen the divisions and the hard feelings and the skepticism about what the public health authorities are advising people to do.