What everyone needs to understand is that the pandemic response is being managed by a cult that doesn't believe in pandemics.

This thread explains how to understand the thinking behind Covid denial.

It's crucial to understand what we are up against. https://twitter.com/absurdistwords/status/1184075420741840896

The Covid-19 pandemic is not being handled as a public health crisis but as an ideological one.

The governing force within those tasked with response is not empiricism, but belief.

Covid-19 is now a deadly proxy in what is essentially a religious sectarian conflict.

In religious conflicts, evidence and data are irrelevant.

The subject of the conflict is less important than the fact that engaging in the conflict itself shows one's dedication to the sect's dogma.

Right now the cult leader is demanding proof of loyalty through human sacrifice

The cult leader prophesied that the disease was going to end in April.

The date came and went and as is seen in any prophetic cult, the failure of a prophecy to be fulfilled merely strengthens the faith of the adherents and they react with
greater fervor to the next prophecy

The only difference between Jim Jones forcing his adherents to self-poison to demonstrate their faith and POTUS forcing America to walk unarmed into a maelstrom of deadly disease is the scale.

To put this in more concrete terms.

If Covid was a category 5 Hurricane making landfall, the equivalent response would be the governor encouraging residents to send their kids to beaches, occupy low ground as much as possible, open all windows and refrain from being inside.

The very same people who are crowding bars and beaches would be showing restraint if their self-preservation instincts weren't being undermined by a cynical effort from trusted authorities to encourage pro-infection behaviors as proof of ideological purity and trust in the dogma.

If there's a hurricane warning and some random dude on the street says "Its a hoax. Don't bother doing anything" you probably won't change your safety plans.

But if the governor's office releases a public statement apologizing for issuing a hurricane warning in error...

Here's why America is unprepared.

Despite ideological conflicts and racial oppression the general presumption among Americans is that "prevent mass numbers of Americans from dying of a pandemic" was a universal sentiment

It doesn't occur to most that this doesn't apply now.

We are all socialized that people who are in authority are there for good reason and if they are discussing public safety, they are to be trusted.

That those in authority would betray that fundamental trust is hard to wrap ones head around.

This administration has from the very beginning, waged an all out assault on the very concepts of data, expertise, truth, objectivity and legitimacy

The intent was to dismantle all trust in every source of reliable information so that nothing but opinion and speculation is left

Now that there is no consistent trust in any of the health authorities, every bit of reliable information about Covid-19 is fodder for sectarian debate.

Since everything is debatable and only opinions exist, there is no consensus on reality itself.

If there was a playbook for how to get a country to maximize the worst effects of a pandemic, it would look like:

Dismantling response teams
Muffling reliable data
Encouraging exposure
Creating confusion about protocol
Limiting testing
Defunding critical initiatives.

Such a playbook is one you would expect to find in the tactical plans of a fierce adversary.

Each of the above bullet points would be a targeted espionage or psychological operations mission.

But instead, it's our own government's response.

Cause it's a death cult.