[BuddhaBrown]

"...He was right about this."

He was. True.

Which makes his later disastrous cave to his populist politician instincts so disturbing.

[Alberta's Child]

What changed in March of 2020 was that the entire country was in a full-blown psychotic hysteria over COVID. Some of us lived through it by the hour at the time. The Branch Covidian idiocy right here on FR was appalling.

I actually blame the major sports leagues (along with the NCAA) for a lot of this stupidity. They didn't even cancel professional sports seasons, NCAA basketball tournaments, etc. during World War II. I said at the time that a lot of the public hysteria was driven by this kind of unprecedented cowardice in business and academia -- and the government response at all levels was mostly driven by a reflexive reaction to the public panic, not by any kind of rational measures that would do anything to stop the spread of COVID.

It's hard for me to criticize Trump for anything he did at the time for two important reasons:

1. I would have done almost everything he did.

2. To reinforce Point #1 ... I was posting right here on FR at the time, advising him to do exactly that.