Serves to remind us of our shared humanity.

Pre-2020 my social circle consisted almost entirely of libertarians and small-government republicans. After Gulf War II ("they have WMD!"), then Snowden ("we’re not spying on you!"), we came to take it as a given that the government always lies. After all, did you not see the lying to Congress about mass surveillance?

Those same people – many of whom self-identified as “skeptics” – were easy prey for Russian bots

All they had to be told was that the government was lying to them about COVID. It matched the pattern of everything else. 95% of them disappeared into disinfo bubbles and became ring-wraith Trump-enablers. Perhaps 5% kept our eye on objective scientific sources and realized in this case actually the government isn’t lying