It is very easy to politicize this, but it wasn't just the party in power: Supposedly independent healthcare organizations in the US gave outright and easily disprovable safety information for at least two months.

We had studies about similar airborne illnesses that showed mask's effectiveness, and while I am sympathetic to protecting key medical supply lines, they have done long term harm to public trust and mask adoption.

The anti-maskers we're seeing today are directly their fault.

Even now, we're still seeing misinformation about the difference between cloth and N95 effectiveness, particularly as the US has failed to ramp up N95 production after months of seeming inaction. Even healthcare providers are still struggling with PPE, let alone the general public or educators with the upcoming school re-openings.

While I agree with your point, there were also anti-maskers during the Spanish Flu, so these anti maskers aren't entirely the fault of the deception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...

I agree that we'd always have some anti-maskers. But the level of it (seemingly mainstream) has been quite problematic (although the tide does seem to be slowly turning).

Despite my other comment (sibling to this one), I do regret mentioning Republicans and Trump. It wasn't necessary to make my point and was in poor taste and poor form.

> It is very easy to politicize this, but it wasn't just the party in power

That's what I'm saying. Non-Trump people took a move out of Trump's playbook. That's vicious.

> The anti-maskers we're seeing today are directly their fault.

I wouldn't go that far. Anybody who is still anti-mask at this point is just an anti-reality nihilist.

Speaking as someone who absolutely loathes Trump, a number of serious mistakes have been made by people including Dr. Fauci and Governor Cuomo that they are largely getting a pass on because they are being graded on a curve so to speak against Trump's complete failure.