Let’s start with Jodi Doering’s night off from her job as an ER nurse in South Dakota… “I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have COViD because it’s not real. Yes. This really happens. And I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a f-cking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again. Which is what I will do for the next three nights. But tonight. It’s me and Cliff and Oreo ice cream. And how ironic I have on my ‘home’ Hoodie. The South Dakota I love seems far away right now…” These people have Covid and are dying in hospital rooms, while denying Covid is real, and arguing this is some Dem plot and the whole world is rigged. Their psychic fantasy, a defense against the abyss of despair, humiliation and nihilism, will live until their body dies. It’s really impossible to overstate how dangerous this level of misinformation is, especially during a pandemic; when the actions of a deluded few can lead to the deaths of an enlightened many. And it’s worth noting that if staring truth in the face in a South Dakota ER won’t change their minds, you can be sure yelling at them on social media won’t work.

+ Over the weekend, thousands of people who think the election was stolen and that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates should be arrested took to the streets of DC. Trump drove by and waved to them on his way to his golf course. (I’d like to see these folks try to get a brunch reservation at Mar a Lago.)

+ Yes, with his inexhaustible rage and delusional defiance of reality, Trump is the perfect leader of this anti-reality movement. But he is far from alone. “The victories in state and local races have allowed GOP leaders to claim a mandate for their let-it-be approach to pandemic management, with pleas for ‘personal responsibility’ substituting government intervention. As hospitals fill and deaths climb, it’s a philosophy that public health experts warn could have disastrous consequences this winter.” WaPo: With pandemic raging, Republicans say election results validate their approach. Validated, first by votes, and now by deaths.

+ Scott Atlas urges Michigan to ‘rise up’ against new Covid-19 measures (he’s urging people to rise up against safety measures offered by their governor who recently faced a murder plot). This is political psychosis, plain and simple.

+ “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis.” Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic: Why Obama Fears for Our Democracy. (If you don’t want to take it from Obama, take it from Jodi Doering…)