Post by Tom Pepinsky / Redsky

Tom Pepinsky • Feed

I’m sorry but facts don’t care about your feelings. If you are blaming Democrats in 2025 for COVID policy in 2020 you have been brainwashed by Trumpism and the death of expertise. The basic point is that Trump associated COVID with his fate in office. That’s it. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

This is our argument. The core explanation for America’s disastrous response to COVID-19 is partisanship. The Trump administration and its partisan allies chose to politicize the pandemic by associating it with Trump’s own fate in office. That decision cast the subsequent response to the COVID-19 pandemic as primarily about partisan politics rather than public health. This partisan response was all-encompassing, touching everything that the pandemic touched

, from health behavior to policy views to worries about the election that occurred during the pandemic’s peak. And as these differences persisted, they metastasized. Partisanship undermined Americans’ social solidarity—their willingness to adopt behaviors to protect others and sometimes themselves—and became the core framework through which Americans interpreted and elected officials reacted to the pandemic. Those differences in opinions and the differences in the behaviors that follow have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. And after two years of pandemic politics the policy landscape is forever changed, as formerly bipartisan issues—such as measles and polio vaccine requirements for schoolchildren and trust in experts—are now politicized like never before.

sep 1, 2025, 8:54 pm • 179 45

Replies

Yeah, there's a lot of bothsidesism in that excerpt. I'm sick of it. There's only one side fighting against science and vaccines: Republicans.

sep 1, 2025, 9:19 pm • 0 0 • view

And he enabled 1.2 million people to be killed. I think RFK, jr is his attempt to beat that record this time.

sep 1, 2025, 9:02 pm • 1 0 • view

Cc @schatz.bsky.social

sep 1, 2025, 9:12 pm • 0 0 • view

You can read a whole book about it if you like. @sgadarian.bsky.social @saragoodman.bsky.social and I took notes as it was happening, and we tell the story straight. No bullshit, no dissembling. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

sep 1, 2025, 8:55 pm • 57 12 • view

Congrats to y'all! Looks like very important, very interesting work!

sep 1, 2025, 9:08 pm • 1 0 • view

Anything the ongoing death and disability toll from Dems trying to play “back to normal” while the pandemic continues?

sep 1, 2025, 10:13 pm • 0 0 • view

That’s a badass tag line. No bullshit. No dissembling.

sep 1, 2025, 9:01 pm • 12 0 • view