It never changes

The global death toll due to COVID was at minimum 7 million but likely much more since many countries stopped counting after a while. 

Here we had a global pandemic not seen since the early 20th century and measures were undertaken to protect the public while experts determined how to tackle what they were facing. 

The logic was to make sure we protect the most vulnerable by exercising caution through the use of measures that some now say were excessive. Had we done nothing, who knows what the death toll would have been. 

In the US where 1.25 million people died (the highest of any country)  Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky had the highest death rates per capita correlating well with low rates of vaccination there. 

Of course now US conservatives 6 years later want to play Monday morning quarterback and say that the guidelines followed at the time were excessive and that the leading immunology expert in the country (who served under multiple presidents) was lying to them all along. 

Republicans are desperate and need something to hold on to before they get clobbered in the midterms. Dr Fauci will need to be that sacrificial lamb to feed to their dumbfounded base. 

It's a hail Mary pass but you have to try something to distract people from the price of groceries and gas brought to them by the current idiot running the place.

But fear not, it is 2026 and it might as well be the Salem witch trials. Different era, same level of ignorance.