HOW THE AUTHORITIES HAVE BLOWN IT:

Several people I spoke with said they’d stop masking only if they had shirts saying “I’m fully vaccinated, not a Republican.”

It’s time for us as a community to continue the effort to de-politicize science and the institutions that analyze it.

Wearing a mask is a public health measure, not a form of dog-whistling.

It has modest utility in certain limited circumstances. But for people who need meaning in their otherwise empty lives, it’s a source of meaning, and self-importance, all the time.