“Thanks to the effort of millions of people, we were close to a great success story. But because of the failures of Trump and Chauvin, of the CDC and the WHO, of public-health experts and Fox News hosts, we are, instead, likely to give up—and tolerate that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will die needless deaths. Pandemics reveal the true state of a society. Ours has come up badly wanting.” The Atlantic’s Yascha Mounk has been disturbingly prescient about this pandemic. Hopefully this headline is where the streak ends. The Virus Will Win. (Long term, we’ll ‘win.’ But the cost will be high. And one thing’s for sure. In the words of John Rambo, “Nothing is over!”)

+ My own prediction: Our weird resistance to doing something as simple and painless as wearing masks will be written about in history books. And like me, most historians will have a hard time explaining it. LA Times: A revolt against wearing masks creates a new coronavirus danger as California reopens. (The more we learn, the more effective masks seem to be. But even if wearing one did nothing other than make your fellow citizens feel better, that should be enough.)