Red state governors sacrificed 200,000 Americans to COVID-19

Movie depictions of human sacrifice are usually pretty straightforward: There’s an altar. There’s a knife. Sometimes the scenes take place on a big pyramid to better show off a stream of blood or a tumbling head.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans witnessed an actual mass human sacrifice that came with a different kind of ceremony and distinctive ritual chants. Those ceremonies took place in red state governors’ offices and the chants intoned “freedom” as these elected officials fought against closing schools, blocked mask mandates, and belittled the effectiveness of vaccines.

According to a paper published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an enormous number of Americans died unnecessarily during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those deaths can’t be laid at the feet of Donald Trump for his diminishment of the threat and mishandling of the consequences. This tragic phenomenon was more local.

As many as one-quarter of a million Americans died simply because their state governments refused to impose good public health standards. They died as appeasements to the twin gods of ignorance and politics.