We can't forget this critical fact: Mask-wearing didn't have to be politicized.

It wasn't inevitable. Trump made it that way, not only with his personal refusal to wear one, but even more importantly by deriding people who wear masks as weak and encouraging protests against efforts by Democratic governors to impose public health measures to contain the virus. He turned refusing to wear a mask into a badge of tribal identification, a way of saying "MAGA 2020! To hell with you, liberals!"

And despite his insane insistence that 224,000 dead Americans — with who knows how many more to come — is the best we could possibly have done, all we have to do is look around the world to see how things could have been different.

We could have been like Canada (just under 10,000 deaths), or Japan (1,700 deaths), or Germany (just over 10,000 deaths), or South Korea (fewer than 500 deaths). Why did those countries succeed where we failed so spectacularly?

Two closely related reasons: They had competent leadership, and their populations didn't go to war with themselves about whether to take simple public health measures — in part because those leaders weren't so spectacularly stupid as to encourage people to flout them.

But Trump did. And even though he's likely to lose the election primarily because of his failure on the pandemic, his narcissistic recklessness will keep killing people even after he's gone.

Trump's last gasp: The pandemic isn't real and everything's fine (behind paywall)