No, it's not manslaughter. It's worse.

It's impossible to know exactly how many lives would have been saved if Trump had been a president of below-average competence who simply followed the lead of his administration's own disease control experts. David Leonhardt's estimate of 145,000, which is the number of Americans who would be alive if our share of global virus deaths was the same as our share of the world population, seems reasonable. But we don't have a sub-replacement-level president of below-average competence. We have a sociopathic narcissist who knew exactly how dangerous the virus is, but who was dead-set from the very beginning on lying to the public and actively opposing and undermining his own government's capacity for effective pandemic response. And all because he thought it would make him look bad, hurt the economy, and hurt his re-election chances.

— Will Wilkinson at Niskanen Center

Or let's ask Nicholas Kristof:

Suppose Trump in January — or even in February — had warned the public of the dangers, had ensured that accurate tests were widely distributed (Sierra Leone had tests available before the United States) and had built up a robust system of contact tracing (Congo has better contact tracing than the United States).

— New York Times

Grocery chains ended their hazard pay for essential workers, so you know what time it is: time for STOCK BUYBACKS! :D (CNN)

A vaccine won't even save us, we need to get our shit together al fucking ready. — Aaron Carroll at New York Times opinion

Here's a fuckton of Facebook posts accusing Antifa of starting wildfires despite Facebook promising to ax them. But Media Matters, I feel like you're forgetting the Truth Sandwich. Don't just throw up a bunch of false shit, I started wondering if Antifa was starting wildfires. (MediaMatters)

Your comrade Eva presents us this gift: a listing of all Don Martin's MAD Magazine onomatopoeic disgust sounds, alphabetically. — Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site

Noah Casler, that guy on Twitter who worked on "The Apprentice" and is always saying what a drug addict Trump was, does a long interview with Greg Olear. (Substack)

Hans von Spakovsky's Super Neato Voter Fraud Secretary of State Secret Clubhouse Meetings, No Girls Dems Allowed. — ProPublica

I'm not even linking to that hideous John Kass/Bill Barr interview, about Nevada gonna steal all the ballots, in the Chicago Tribune. I'll just leave it at Roger Stone says reporting is sedition, so. — Daily Beast

What we don't know about the ambush shooting of the LA Sheriff's deputies. — Thoughtful column by Erika Smith at LA Times

Take some time and some deep breaths for this climate migration, present and future. (ProPublica)

Is civilization collapsing? I'm framing it as a question, but apparently yes. — Umair Haque at Medium

My friend Betty died. She always had terrible asthma, and was always worried she'd die from it, and she did. Her magnificent daughter Justine is with Betty's husband, my friend Brian, who is currently as you would expect. They were together since I was a year old, and I am 47. We have been friends since I was 22, when they introduced me to the art of having older friends with nice houses and shit. I had a standing invitation to bring my small son over for relaxing Nice Times and good meals and liquor and foosball, and now all of my friends are 75. We always had a plan for the Apocalypse: I would put my son and dog in the car and drive as far as I could before the freeway turned into a parking lot, and then walk the rest of the 30 miles to their home in Orange, where they had guns and wine and would be waiting. If the Apocalypse happened after they retired full-time to Sequim, I would do the same but toward Los Angeles's marina, where I would sexual-favors our way onto a boat, and in the same manner convince the boat's owners to head north, where three days after any apocalypse, Brian would start checking for us each day at the seashore. Betty died of her asthma. The fire smoke killed her. The Apocalypse, it isn't not here.