“Face Mask” by shibuya246 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The logic behind medical face masks was never obscure.  When you sneeze or cough, droplets with virus are largely contained rather than spread.  That logic is clear and confirmed by statistics.

Who knows what Trump thinks, but the Republican Party certainly includes people capable of understanding that sentence.  Such people had a choice.  They knew they could save the country from a serious and completely unnecessary health risk, but they chose the political opportunities of divisiveness instead.

They made that choice.  Face masks had nothing to do with how quickly we were reopening the economy.   Many thousands will die for it.

This is hardly the first case of “public be damned” behavior.  But it is a very pure one.