[Peter_Spaeth]

Mark, let me put it this way, and I am fine if your starting point is ideology not party affiliation. I am not quarreling which comes first. To my mind, a "more freedom" ideology would point towards objecting to MANDATORY masks or vaccines, but should be neutral as to any given individual's assessment of whether the science points to wearing or getting one or not. Yet, from what I have seen, there is a strong correlation between people's ideology (or political party as a proxy for that, if imperfect) and their views on the vaccines and masks themselves. This is what puzzles me. There doesn't seem to be a logical connection. Personally, I am mostly in the more freedom camp and don't think there should be mandates, but I believe pretty strongly it's a good idea to wear an N95 in certain settings and maybe in even more settings if you're higher risk. But I think if I expressed that view of masks, most people would assume I was a liberal or whatever the word is. Conversely, people espousing the view of fuck vaccines and masks are probably not liberals.

These days it seems so many issues seem to divide along party lines that aren't really logically connected to the party's underlying ideology. As I said before, very few people are agnostic about questions which should be answered without regard to political or ideological affiliation.