During the Covid pandemic, Republican politicians desperately tried to downplay and disparage the crisis in order to protect Pres. Trump from political damage over his dangerously incompetent handling of the crisis. It appears that their political malfeasance backfired, however, because Covid killed many more Republicans – who bought into the GOP’s anti-mask and anti-medical science campaign – than Democrats who followed doctors’ advice and wore masks and took other precautions.
Post-pandemic analyses found that Republicans died in greater numbers across the country, and researchers at Yale University who studied Covid mortality in two ruby red states, Florida and Ohio, found that “the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43 percent higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters. The gap in excess death rates between Republican and Democratic voters was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates…”
It was puzzling then that the GOP was systematically killing off older party members, it’s most reliable voters. Party leaders addressed this tragic disparity back then, predictably, by first lying about and then by ignoring it.
Now the North Carolina Senate has decided that when the next pandemic comes, no one in the state will survive, irrespective of party. In a ham-fisted and short-sighted attempt to prevent protesters from wearing Covid masks to hide their identities, the Senate has voted to ban wearing masks in public for any reason, from disease prevention to, let’s assume, trick or treating at Halloween. How this law will be enforced in the nation’s ninth largest state remains to be seen. The Hill reports that:
The North Carolina state Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons.
Republican supporters of the ban said it would help law enforcement crack down on protesters who wear masks. They say demonstrators are abusing COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide their identities following a wave of pro-Palestine protests nationwide and at North Carolina universities.
The bill goes even further and repeals an exception that’s been state law since the early stages of the pandemic that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons.
Thirty senators voted in favor of House Bill 237, while 15 opposed it and five were absent.
