Why does no one ever talk about the very first lie? Trump knew all along that it was more dangerous than he was saying. If he had been honest about that from the beginning we could have all been on the same page, when developing safety plans.
I appreciate the attitude that "in retrospect mistakes were made". Perhaps we are at enough distance from the pandemic now that we could learn from mistakes.
I hope this attitude of tolerance would allow discussion of the differences between what we traditionally call vaccines (like flu shots) and the mRNA products. There is now significant scientific data about how our bodies process the mRNA products. I wish this information was more well known.
Mortal sins of the mainstream: (1) made people wear masks in an on-off fashion, (2) kept schools closed too long
Mortal sins of MAGA: (1) extra 100,000 dead, (2) people using quack "cures" that damage their organs, (3) convinced people that ALL vaccines are dangerous
Author: These things are equivalent (or even worse, the Mortal sins of MAGA were caused/excused/rationalized by the Mortal sins of the mainstream)
I feel like the writer is doing some both-sidesing in this story. Over a thousand children died of covid and many thousands were hospitalized. (Source; This Week in Virology) It wasn't that easy to open schools with all the factors involved. The fact is when worldwide disasters like pandemics occur, people suffer. It was impossible to navigate this in some perfect way that there would have been no long-term harm.
Most good-faith scientists did the best they could with limited knowledge under horrific stress that the Republicans made worse with their culture war bullshit. In the service of Trump worship, Republicans are trying to erase all memory of the worst of it when hospitals were overrun and people were dying by the thousands every week.
Having now seen this info re: the website, I am wondering if there should be libel lawsuits filed by Dr. Fauci and (probably former) public health officials
Please stop saying that school closures were a mistake because children were mostly protected from the worst effects of the pandemic. 1) COVID killed and hospitalized a lit of children. 4 deaths in my area. Hospital overflowed and routine care suffered. 2) Cases spread. You can't have schools full of virus and keep it out of care homes.
Not to mention that having schools open put older teachers at risk as well as older family members at home! I swear, people seemed to lose all sense of logic during the pandemic.
Hi Matt, I am sorry if it sounded that way.... I can't imagine how scary it must have been for your family during the Covid pandemic! No way should ANYONE be erased from these conversations.
Wow the one that vividly sticks in my mind is when "HE"(47) said it's not that bad and would be gone by March or April. I think he said a "couple of weeks" and mentioned Easter. Boy was he wrong on that one. The mention of sunlight and Bleach (yes HE DID mention Bleach) far outweigh poor Dr Fauci's terminologies! And afterwards Dr Fauci had to live with death threats from people whose families died. One other one I remembered hearing early on was the "single" man in I think it was Oregon had it but they found him and everything was going to be just "FINE." Geez everything wasn't fine and it dragged on for two years afterward when Vaccines arrived.
It's unlikely that the lab leak/wet market controversy will be settled. The Chinese will not provide relevant information that might clarify the origin. The Chinese release of the genome was not authorized and the scientist who did it was punished.
I'm not convinced that the origin narrative matters. That the origin of Covid is disputed suggests that each theory is plausible. Thus vigilance and security protocols should be adopted in both venues. Gain of function experiments need to be subjected to strict scrutiny to confirm their value and monitored closely.
We are unlikely to definatively determine if the Chinese were developing a viral weapon. If that was the case, the effort backfired spectacularly. The Chinese scientist who publicized the existence of Covid died. The government's original response was draconian which occasioned protests. Xi subsequently opened society without adequate vaccinations leading to excess deaths. The Chinese economy has not rebounded since.
Our efforts should focus on a dispassionate review of how we responded and what should be done when the next pandemic appears.
I think part of what made people crazy is not knowing the origin. I have family that spent 2020 sending random YouTube interviews and “treatments” to group chats.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) 22 April 2025
Evidence and Discovery Management Unit – EDMU
Office of the Prosecutor
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands
Reference: The genocide unfolding across Africa due to Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk closing USAID/PEPFAR.
On behalf of millions of Americans and others around the world, we are requesting that the ICC issue an arrest warrant for both Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk in the United States. Mr. Vance should be included. We believe that your contractual relationship with the United Nations would permit this critical action.
In January, immediately after the U.S. inauguration of Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk visited USAID and closed all operations. Two months later he stated, “No one has died since aid was cut.” This was a deliberate lie – like Vladimir Putin has lied to the Russian public about the war in Ukraine which has killed millions of innocent Ukrainian souls. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin. Russia is not a signatory on the Rome Statute and neither is the U.S. – but these crimes against humanity are enacted in Africa. There are 33 African countries who have signed the Rome Statute. Please ACT before more deaths and human carnage can be realized. Thousands of people are dying daily.
Evidence:
“Two to four million additional Africans are likely to die annually as a result of the shock aid cuts by the United States, according to Dr. Jean Kaseya, who heads the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.” (Health Policy Watch, Africa CDC 03/20/25)
Reuters reported that an estimated year-long pause in USAID support would cause between 71,000 and 166,000 additional malaria deaths – a 40% increase. TB deaths would increase between 28% and 32% worldwide.
Global Health published an article by a Boston University Mathematician tracking how many deaths may result from USAID and Medicaid Cuts. USAID provided international health assistance to over 120 countries. This article states that “because of the PEPFAR funding freeze, she found that an adult life will be lost every 3 minutes, and a child will die every 31 minutes.”
Mr. Trump's DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Program is proof of his preconceived and prejudical opinions, formed without sufficient knowledge or thought, especially towards a particular group or individual. The NYT's article written by Thomas Edsall on October 16, 2024 said, "Donald Trump is so dependent on racial and ethnic antagonism that without it, he would be a marginal figure. . . Trump's constant demonization of Black people and immigrants has inured the American public to the fact that he is the first modern president to transparently generate, fear and white animosity toward people of color. . . racial bigotry has been central to Trump's appeal from his initial quest in 2015." His closure of USAID in Africa was a deliberate act and a crime against humanity.
The New York Times printed an article on Sunday, April 20, 2025, authored by Declan Walsh and titled “Aid Cuts Hit the Hungry in a City of Shellfire and Starvation.” To quote the first few paragraphs, it says: The children died one after the other. Twelve acutely malnourished infants living in one corner of Sudan’s war-ravaged capital, Khartoum. Abdo, an 18-month-old boy, had been rushed to the clinic by his mother as he was dying. His ribs protruded from his withered body. The next day, a doctor laid him out on a blanket with a teddy bear motif, his eyes closed. Like the other 11 children, Abdo starved to death in the weeks after President Trump (and Mr. Musk) froze all U.S. foreign assistance, said local aid workers and a doctor. American-funded soup kitchens in Sudan, including the one near Abdo’s house, had been the only lifelines for tens of thousands of people. . . “It was catastrophic,” said Duaa Tariq, an aid worker.
My name is Elizabeth Houde, and I have previously worked in several African nations and seen the level of poverty and starvation. My work was funded by The World Bank and by USAID. The NYT’s article and its accompanying photos brought tears and heartfelt pain that such ruthless AND inhumane actions could be from an American President. Mr. Trump is deliberately murdering millions of black lives.
The International Criminal Court is the only HOPE for millions of people in Africa and in the 120 countries served by USAID. These two men have deliberately stopped life-saving food, medications, and medical care to starving and sick people. They have committed both a genocide and crimes against humanity.
I actually have a question. I understand that closing schools was detrimental for students, but wasn't the point of that to stop the spread in general? As I recall, at least one teacher died and some children did, too. I'm a retired nurse -- I was actually a college professor and teaching at the start of the pandemic, not practicing clinically. I did volunteer with the vaccination effort of our local health department. Had I been younger and in practice I would not have hesitated to care for COVID patients--after all, that's what doctors, nurses, etc., sign up for. And even though inadequate, at least at first, I would have had protective gear designed to prevent my catching or spreading the virus. But school teachers? Other than closing schools, which may look like a mistake in hindsight, how would we have protected teachers and others who work in schools? Too bad the current administration is focused on revising history. That way we'll never learn how to approach any similar outbreaks in the future
I also recall stories of schools that were officially open having to close for short stretches because too many teachers were out sick (like snow days, but an epidemic instead of a blizzard).
Yeah. Maybe most children don’t die from it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get it and gift it to everyone around them. Even one death is one death too many, even if that person was old or unhealthy to begin with. That was what got me during this whole thing, the idea that if someone was old or unhealthy anyway, their death from COVID wasn’t a tragedy. Also, if they died of a stroke, for example, their death wasn’t caused by COVID. Hello, they died of a stroke because their body was battling COVID…
I lost my nanny job because of COVID-19. My nanny baby’s parents were already working at home and they decided to take care of him themselves for several months. I went to work for the New York State Department of Health as a contact tracer. Working from my home, I started calling people in Albany County, and for the most part, they were very pleasant and very thankful for the job that I was doing, even if I was telling them to stay at home in a closed room, just so they didn’t infect their own family. As the virus became less concerning because of the vaccine, they consolidated us and laid some of us off. That put me in the North Country of New York, Elise Stefanik’s area. After 4 months of vicious abuse from those people, I quit. I was called names, I was told I was brainwashed, I was told that the school deliberately infected the football team, and I was told that Bill Gates is trying to control our minds. I heard it all. I gave a polite two weeks notice to my supervisor, and then probably experienced the most abusive phone call ever. I’m not usually emotional, but I called him back in tears and quit on the spot.
That's a terrible, but all-too-common story. We live on Long Island. One of our neighbors is full QAnon. She came down with Covid and came very close to giving it to us. She was unvaccinated, naturally, and ended up first at City MD and then the ER. Her partner told us that the ER doctor said she would have been in "serious trouble" if she hadn't gotten meds at City MD the day before. Even in the ER she was posting on Facebook stuff about the Covid hoax, etc. I wrote a comment that maybe in light of what was happening (I didn't say what that was), she might want to hold off on posting that stuff. She went OFF on me!!!! Insisting that of all the people with Covid in the ER, she was the only one unvaccinated (how she determined this I'll never know), that all of the vaccinated people there were shitting the bed, and on and on. Crazy stuff!!!
I'm sure the doctor who wrote this is a fine man, etc, but I'm shocked and disappointed when serious people act like somehow these off-the-charts crazy reactions to masks and school closings were reasonable. It's so weird!
I am so sorry this happened to you! I live in upstate New York... there are a lot of nice people here, but a lot of nuts too, I'm sure... and I can't believe the avalanche of conspiratorial and basically cruel behavior around this virus.
I came to say the same thing. I cannot understand why that is never explained when people complain about the schools being closed. And saying, "well, kids MOSTLY don't get it so they will be okay." What about taking it home to parents and grandparents or others who are immune-compromised. I'm so sick of people being stupid!
I’ve never understood this obsession with the lab leak theory. It started very early, when we were dealing with myriad other problems related to the virus. I thought “Why does it matter? It’s out there spreading and we have to deal with it.” Is further investigation warranted now that the worst of it is behind us and we know so much more about how to deal with it on a daily basis? Yes! But from what I’ve read, we can’t know for sure how it started. Seems like a one paragraph explanation somewhere of lesser prominence would be appropriate. “There are two major theories about how COVID 19 got started. Neither can be definitively proven. They are . . .” And we all move on with the actual scientific knowledge we now have about how to prevent this and other diseases. It’s mind blowing to me that there’s any sizable segment of our population that is still this intensely focused on where Covid originated.
Why does no one ever talk about the very first lie? Trump knew all along that it was more dangerous than he was saying. If he had been honest about that from the beginning we could have all been on the same page, when developing safety plans.
Thanks for the Representative McBride podcast recommendation, such a good listen.
I appreciate the attitude that "in retrospect mistakes were made". Perhaps we are at enough distance from the pandemic now that we could learn from mistakes.
I hope this attitude of tolerance would allow discussion of the differences between what we traditionally call vaccines (like flu shots) and the mRNA products. There is now significant scientific data about how our bodies process the mRNA products. I wish this information was more well known.
Mortal sins of the mainstream: (1) made people wear masks in an on-off fashion, (2) kept schools closed too long
Mortal sins of MAGA: (1) extra 100,000 dead, (2) people using quack "cures" that damage their organs, (3) convinced people that ALL vaccines are dangerous
Author: These things are equivalent (or even worse, the Mortal sins of MAGA were caused/excused/rationalized by the Mortal sins of the mainstream)
America, we are getting what we deserve!!!
I feel like the writer is doing some both-sidesing in this story. Over a thousand children died of covid and many thousands were hospitalized. (Source; This Week in Virology) It wasn't that easy to open schools with all the factors involved. The fact is when worldwide disasters like pandemics occur, people suffer. It was impossible to navigate this in some perfect way that there would have been no long-term harm.
Most good-faith scientists did the best they could with limited knowledge under horrific stress that the Republicans made worse with their culture war bullshit. In the service of Trump worship, Republicans are trying to erase all memory of the worst of it when hospitals were overrun and people were dying by the thousands every week.
Having now seen this info re: the website, I am wondering if there should be libel lawsuits filed by Dr. Fauci and (probably former) public health officials
Republicans spread lies about vaccines that kill their own voters and the public’s response is to blame Democrats for overreaching.
Please stop saying that school closures were a mistake because children were mostly protected from the worst effects of the pandemic. 1) COVID killed and hospitalized a lit of children. 4 deaths in my area. Hospital overflowed and routine care suffered. 2) Cases spread. You can't have schools full of virus and keep it out of care homes.
Not to mention that having schools open put older teachers at risk as well as older family members at home! I swear, people seemed to lose all sense of logic during the pandemic.
I've got a medically fragile kid, and the way she gets erased from these conversations makes my blood boil.
Hi Matt, I am sorry if it sounded that way.... I can't imagine how scary it must have been for your family during the Covid pandemic! No way should ANYONE be erased from these conversations.
Politicizing public health. What could go wrong?
Wow the one that vividly sticks in my mind is when "HE"(47) said it's not that bad and would be gone by March or April. I think he said a "couple of weeks" and mentioned Easter. Boy was he wrong on that one. The mention of sunlight and Bleach (yes HE DID mention Bleach) far outweigh poor Dr Fauci's terminologies! And afterwards Dr Fauci had to live with death threats from people whose families died. One other one I remembered hearing early on was the "single" man in I think it was Oregon had it but they found him and everything was going to be just "FINE." Geez everything wasn't fine and it dragged on for two years afterward when Vaccines arrived.
It's unlikely that the lab leak/wet market controversy will be settled. The Chinese will not provide relevant information that might clarify the origin. The Chinese release of the genome was not authorized and the scientist who did it was punished.
I'm not convinced that the origin narrative matters. That the origin of Covid is disputed suggests that each theory is plausible. Thus vigilance and security protocols should be adopted in both venues. Gain of function experiments need to be subjected to strict scrutiny to confirm their value and monitored closely.
We are unlikely to definatively determine if the Chinese were developing a viral weapon. If that was the case, the effort backfired spectacularly. The Chinese scientist who publicized the existence of Covid died. The government's original response was draconian which occasioned protests. Xi subsequently opened society without adequate vaccinations leading to excess deaths. The Chinese economy has not rebounded since.
Our efforts should focus on a dispassionate review of how we responded and what should be done when the next pandemic appears.
I think part of what made people crazy is not knowing the origin. I have family that spent 2020 sending random YouTube interviews and “treatments” to group chats.
Please write to the ICC. Here is a sample letter:
The International Criminal Court (ICC) 22 April 2025
Evidence and Discovery Management Unit – EDMU
Office of the Prosecutor
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands
Reference: The genocide unfolding across Africa due to Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk closing USAID/PEPFAR.
On behalf of millions of Americans and others around the world, we are requesting that the ICC issue an arrest warrant for both Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk in the United States. Mr. Vance should be included. We believe that your contractual relationship with the United Nations would permit this critical action.
In January, immediately after the U.S. inauguration of Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk visited USAID and closed all operations. Two months later he stated, “No one has died since aid was cut.” This was a deliberate lie – like Vladimir Putin has lied to the Russian public about the war in Ukraine which has killed millions of innocent Ukrainian souls. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin. Russia is not a signatory on the Rome Statute and neither is the U.S. – but these crimes against humanity are enacted in Africa. There are 33 African countries who have signed the Rome Statute. Please ACT before more deaths and human carnage can be realized. Thousands of people are dying daily.
Evidence:
“Two to four million additional Africans are likely to die annually as a result of the shock aid cuts by the United States, according to Dr. Jean Kaseya, who heads the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.” (Health Policy Watch, Africa CDC 03/20/25)
Reuters reported that an estimated year-long pause in USAID support would cause between 71,000 and 166,000 additional malaria deaths – a 40% increase. TB deaths would increase between 28% and 32% worldwide.
Global Health published an article by a Boston University Mathematician tracking how many deaths may result from USAID and Medicaid Cuts. USAID provided international health assistance to over 120 countries. This article states that “because of the PEPFAR funding freeze, she found that an adult life will be lost every 3 minutes, and a child will die every 31 minutes.”
Mr. Trump's DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Program is proof of his preconceived and prejudical opinions, formed without sufficient knowledge or thought, especially towards a particular group or individual. The NYT's article written by Thomas Edsall on October 16, 2024 said, "Donald Trump is so dependent on racial and ethnic antagonism that without it, he would be a marginal figure. . . Trump's constant demonization of Black people and immigrants has inured the American public to the fact that he is the first modern president to transparently generate, fear and white animosity toward people of color. . . racial bigotry has been central to Trump's appeal from his initial quest in 2015." His closure of USAID in Africa was a deliberate act and a crime against humanity.
The New York Times printed an article on Sunday, April 20, 2025, authored by Declan Walsh and titled “Aid Cuts Hit the Hungry in a City of Shellfire and Starvation.” To quote the first few paragraphs, it says: The children died one after the other. Twelve acutely malnourished infants living in one corner of Sudan’s war-ravaged capital, Khartoum. Abdo, an 18-month-old boy, had been rushed to the clinic by his mother as he was dying. His ribs protruded from his withered body. The next day, a doctor laid him out on a blanket with a teddy bear motif, his eyes closed. Like the other 11 children, Abdo starved to death in the weeks after President Trump (and Mr. Musk) froze all U.S. foreign assistance, said local aid workers and a doctor. American-funded soup kitchens in Sudan, including the one near Abdo’s house, had been the only lifelines for tens of thousands of people. . . “It was catastrophic,” said Duaa Tariq, an aid worker.
My name is Elizabeth Houde, and I have previously worked in several African nations and seen the level of poverty and starvation. My work was funded by The World Bank and by USAID. The NYT’s article and its accompanying photos brought tears and heartfelt pain that such ruthless AND inhumane actions could be from an American President. Mr. Trump is deliberately murdering millions of black lives.
The International Criminal Court is the only HOPE for millions of people in Africa and in the 120 countries served by USAID. These two men have deliberately stopped life-saving food, medications, and medical care to starving and sick people. They have committed both a genocide and crimes against humanity.
THEY MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.
One more contribution to the tsunami of NONSENSE from the Trump Administration!
I actually have a question. I understand that closing schools was detrimental for students, but wasn't the point of that to stop the spread in general? As I recall, at least one teacher died and some children did, too. I'm a retired nurse -- I was actually a college professor and teaching at the start of the pandemic, not practicing clinically. I did volunteer with the vaccination effort of our local health department. Had I been younger and in practice I would not have hesitated to care for COVID patients--after all, that's what doctors, nurses, etc., sign up for. And even though inadequate, at least at first, I would have had protective gear designed to prevent my catching or spreading the virus. But school teachers? Other than closing schools, which may look like a mistake in hindsight, how would we have protected teachers and others who work in schools? Too bad the current administration is focused on revising history. That way we'll never learn how to approach any similar outbreaks in the future
Quite a few teachers died. I knew one personally, and I found one online memorial that cataloged over a thousand deaths of teachers and other school personnel as of 2022: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus/2020/04
I also recall stories of schools that were officially open having to close for short stretches because too many teachers were out sick (like snow days, but an epidemic instead of a blizzard).
Yeah. Maybe most children don’t die from it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get it and gift it to everyone around them. Even one death is one death too many, even if that person was old or unhealthy to begin with. That was what got me during this whole thing, the idea that if someone was old or unhealthy anyway, their death from COVID wasn’t a tragedy. Also, if they died of a stroke, for example, their death wasn’t caused by COVID. Hello, they died of a stroke because their body was battling COVID…
I lost my nanny job because of COVID-19. My nanny baby’s parents were already working at home and they decided to take care of him themselves for several months. I went to work for the New York State Department of Health as a contact tracer. Working from my home, I started calling people in Albany County, and for the most part, they were very pleasant and very thankful for the job that I was doing, even if I was telling them to stay at home in a closed room, just so they didn’t infect their own family. As the virus became less concerning because of the vaccine, they consolidated us and laid some of us off. That put me in the North Country of New York, Elise Stefanik’s area. After 4 months of vicious abuse from those people, I quit. I was called names, I was told I was brainwashed, I was told that the school deliberately infected the football team, and I was told that Bill Gates is trying to control our minds. I heard it all. I gave a polite two weeks notice to my supervisor, and then probably experienced the most abusive phone call ever. I’m not usually emotional, but I called him back in tears and quit on the spot.
That's a terrible, but all-too-common story. We live on Long Island. One of our neighbors is full QAnon. She came down with Covid and came very close to giving it to us. She was unvaccinated, naturally, and ended up first at City MD and then the ER. Her partner told us that the ER doctor said she would have been in "serious trouble" if she hadn't gotten meds at City MD the day before. Even in the ER she was posting on Facebook stuff about the Covid hoax, etc. I wrote a comment that maybe in light of what was happening (I didn't say what that was), she might want to hold off on posting that stuff. She went OFF on me!!!! Insisting that of all the people with Covid in the ER, she was the only one unvaccinated (how she determined this I'll never know), that all of the vaccinated people there were shitting the bed, and on and on. Crazy stuff!!!
I'm sure the doctor who wrote this is a fine man, etc, but I'm shocked and disappointed when serious people act like somehow these off-the-charts crazy reactions to masks and school closings were reasonable. It's so weird!
Yeah.
I am so sorry this happened to you! I live in upstate New York... there are a lot of nice people here, but a lot of nuts too, I'm sure... and I can't believe the avalanche of conspiratorial and basically cruel behavior around this virus.
I came to say the same thing. I cannot understand why that is never explained when people complain about the schools being closed. And saying, "well, kids MOSTLY don't get it so they will be okay." What about taking it home to parents and grandparents or others who are immune-compromised. I'm so sick of people being stupid!
This was explained ad nauseum.
Felon Trump’s grievance list keeps going and going.
I’ve never understood this obsession with the lab leak theory. It started very early, when we were dealing with myriad other problems related to the virus. I thought “Why does it matter? It’s out there spreading and we have to deal with it.” Is further investigation warranted now that the worst of it is behind us and we know so much more about how to deal with it on a daily basis? Yes! But from what I’ve read, we can’t know for sure how it started. Seems like a one paragraph explanation somewhere of lesser prominence would be appropriate. “There are two major theories about how COVID 19 got started. Neither can be definitively proven. They are . . .” And we all move on with the actual scientific knowledge we now have about how to prevent this and other diseases. It’s mind blowing to me that there’s any sizable segment of our population that is still this intensely focused on where Covid originated.