The 180-degree shift in acceptable public opinion about masks is in line with how the rest of this crisis has unfolded. Masks won’t help. Everyone needs a mask. It’s not worth shutting down travel to and from China over the virus, and Trump is just being a xenophobe here. Trump should have done more to prevent the virus from coming to these shores. It’s less dangerous than the flu; calling it less dangerous than the flu is a right-wing meme, perhaps even (one shudders) “misinformation.” Human beings can’t even transmit the virus directly to one another; it originated with animals in Chinese open-air “wet” food markets. Talking about the wet markets is racist, except when Dr. Fauci does it.

Can we please stop talking this way? As I write this our paper of record is all but publicly rooting for the failure of anti-malarial drugs that appear to have been successful in treating some coronavirus patients. It is not against “science,” whatever that may be, for the president or anyone else to observe that certain medicines or treatments have worked. It is not for science, either. It’s just a fact that may or may not have limited application depending upon what happens over the next few months. A bit more epistemic humility would be welcome all around.