The Last Covidians

Last week, Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Coronavirus Response Director, claimed that the hundreds of daily U.S. deaths from (or with) Covid-19 “would go to close to zero” if every person “was up to date on their vaccines and people got treated with Paxlovid as they’re supposed to.”My tweet of his video clip garnered a well-deserved and much-expected ratio, with far more quote tweets and responses than likes or retweeets. However, while the vast majority of respondents who were critical of Jha came from Team Reality (given the political leanings of my followers, that was no surprise), several more came from Branch Covidians angry at Jha — one of their own — for supposedly not emphasizing avoiding Covid altogether and taking Covid measures like masking.Similarly, Dr. Leana Wen of CNN fame, a subject of frequent and deserved ire from the right for previous tyrannical positions on vaccine mandates, has recently come under Covidian fire for calls to end mandates and get things back to normal.“Though CDC has aligned COVID guidance to meet where most Americans are, there are some who promote continued restrictions,” Wen wrote on Twitter last week. “Are they consistent themselves, always masking indoors, forgoing indoor events/dining, etc? If not, hypocrisy fuels further distrust in public health.”If you read through her responses and quote tweets, you’ll likely see an equal amount of criticism from both sides of this issue, including this gem:“I’m proudly one of those people and am entirely consistent but I’m afraid I’m the last one left.  Not only do I promote restrictions, I want them MANDATED and NOW! No restaurants, no concerts, no nonsense — enough is enough and this nightmare must end ONCE AND FOR ALL!” bleated Chad Goldsmith in what became a deservedly ratioed tweet.If only Goldsmith WERE the “last one left.” Professor Francois Balloux of the UCL Genetics Institute summarized and warned against the backlash against Wen and others of a similar mindset in a tweet thread, calling out “radical activists” who still support “harsh restrictions” to contain the virus and are trying to cancel the CNN medical analyst for seemingly wanting to move on. Wen herself retweeted Balloux’s analysis.“There is an ‘ac …