Fauci did not destroy Ridley Scott. He may have helped destroy the automatic credibility of the world in which the classic killer-virus movie took place. That world required an audience willing to assume that the pathogen was opaque, the experts transparent.

I wondered, if things had gone differently, would the pandemic’s superstitions have hardened into folklore the way Baseball’s did? Over time, the silly superstitions building themselves into a mythic narrative?

We should not be surprised that treatment approaches based upon false ideas about gender identity, and a faulty anthropology, are ineffective.