 So I'm not sure if we should call the current spike in COVID cases the second wave given that we haven't ever really gotten over the first wave. But what we do know is that certain states have handled COVID-19 better than other states. And even if, you know, you really need the federal government to take action to make these states more effective at dealing with this crisis, you know, there are simple things that states can do to make sure that, you know, citizens are more protected from the virus. Now, there is a visualization from, I believe, a graphic designer. His name is Dan Goodspeed, and he took data from the New York Times and he put together how many cases there are in each state and he controlled for Republican and controlled states and Democratic controlled states or leaning states. And what this really proves to us is that one party who doesn't trust science, who doesn't believe in science is very incapable of dealing with this pandemic. And what we see here with this visualization is stunning. So let's take a look. So as you can see here from the beginning in June, you know, the states, they're affected relatively equally. You know, you have some very Democratic states, some very Republican states. And, you know, you don't necessarily see a huge trend, although at the top you are starting to see, you know, red states become more affected. And as time ticks by in this graph, you see a very clear pattern. Almost all of the states with spikes in COVID cases as of October 2nd are red states. They lean Republican. Now, in case you're wondering, these are the states with the least amount of cases as of October 11th, and I'll link to that down below in case you want to watch the full visualization. Now, look, there's a reason why this is happening in these states that lean Republican more often than not, they're controlled by Republicans and little things that they refuse to do make their citizens that much more vulnerable. For example, there is still a solid number of states that do not mandate masks statewide. And Republicans have not been very helpful in pushing this initiative forward. I mean, Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp literally sued the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, over her mask mandate. He sued her over this. Our Republicans in Wisconsin sought to overturn their Democratic governor's statewide mask mandate, but thankfully that was overturned. But just the fact that they wanted to overturn his mask mandate shows you that they're not serious people. And finally, after months of fighting it, Florida governor Ron DeSantis is finally saying that local municipalities can require masks. But, you know, they can't enforce it, which basically makes it meaningless. So the reason why Republican leaning states are doing worse is because of things like this. Even though a lot of states are run by corporate Democrats, most blue states are run by corporate Democrats, even just believing in science gives residents a much better chance of dealing with this virus, not being affected by it. I mean, in my state of Oregon, Kate Brown, even though I think she's better than most corporate Democrats, I think that she still falls under the category of corporate Democrat, even though she's proven me wrong in certain areas by, you know, signing that neutrality and trying to do climate change legislation. But she decided to adopt a statewide mask mandate. And I could tell you firsthand that made a huge, huge difference. So whenever I would go out in public, I would see maybe 30, 40 percent of people wearing masks, but almost immediately after she mandated masks statewide, that number shot up to 99 percent. Now, this is anecdotal. This is based on what I see. But I'm telling you, just mandating masks alone makes a huge difference. And it's the bare minimum. But yet there are Republicans in states that are literally fighting it. So when you see that visualization and you see how many red states are more affected by COVID-19, I mean, this is a policy failure. This is a failure on behalf of Republican leadership. And it starts with Donald Trump, who has constantly spread misinformation about this virus since the beginning. I mean, he admitted in the Bob Woodward tapes that he's down playing COVID-19 because he apparently didn't want to cause a panic. Yeah, totally believable. When you have a party that doesn't even accept the reality of manmade climate change. Of course, when you're already denying science, whenever there's something like this that comes up that requires, you know, experts, scientists, epidemiologists, health experts, you know, if you already are not going to take them seriously for whatever reason, maybe you don't want to shut down in your state because you don't want to hurt your economy. You're just hurting your people because it's not like, and I've said this before, it's not like you can choose to, you know, just pretend like everything is normal and have your economies opens and kids back to school and, you know, you're choosing, you know, to save the economy over human lives. You can't get the economy in good shape if you have so many people affected by a highly contagious deadly virus. We have 215,000 Americans around the country that died. That shouldn't happen. That wouldn't happen if we didn't respond to this pandemic like a failed state overall, but just individually at the state level. You see which states are doing worse. It's the ones who don't take it seriously, who won't mandate masks. And, you know, that's a generalization. It might not be applicable to every single state and every single circumstance. There have been some Republican governors surprisingly that have done a great job at trying to get it under control, even if I disagree with them in other areas with regard to policy. But still, you've got to understand that overall Republicans haven't just been unhelpful in helping us mitigate the spread and contain the spread of COVID-19, but they've made matters worse. So this visualization is very telling and I'd encourage you to look at the website because he has a lot more graphs that are very, very illuminating and tells you which party is serious. And as much as I hate corporate Democrats and they irritate me and they need to be more progressive, at least when it comes to a basic function of governance that we'd expect from them, I think they'd probably get this under control. I think they'd mandate masks. So, you know, it just shows you that the GOP is basically a death cold and this party has to go away. It has to go the way of the dodo and Democrats have to be the new de facto conservative party and we need a new left-wing party. I mean, I know that that's wishful thinking, but Republicans are just so extreme that they're irredeemable. You can't salvage this party. It's a clown show. But trust me, I'd have way more supporters on Patreon if that was my podcast. Sad.