"In Covid's Wake" Part 2: Wrong About The Right
6/19/20251 hr 10 min
Last episode we met two Princeton political scientists who are bad at virology. Today we learn that they are also bad at political science.
Where to find us:
Sources:
- Lawrence Wright’s “The Plague Year”
- Jonathan Howard’s “We Want Them Infected”
- How the Pandemic Defeated America
- COVID-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions
- US State Restrictions and Excess COVID-19 Pandemic Deaths
- Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions
- Policy Interventions, Social Distancing, and SARS-CoV-2 Transmission
- The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US Cumulative Deaths
- Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates
- Report for the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry
- The Effectiveness Of Government Masking Mandates
- School closures during COVID-19
- COVID-19–Related School Closures
- The Effects of School Closures on COVID‑19
- Higher COVID-19 Deaths with Later School Closure in the United States
- Reopening America’s Schools
- Reading literacy decline in Europe
- DeSantis vs. Newsom
- Red States Have Seen Less Learning Loss
- Political partisanship and mobility restriction
- Republicans Aren’t New To The Anti-Vaxx Movement
- KFF poll on anti-vaxx beliefs
Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMike· Host0:00
Do you have a zinger?
Peter Shamshiri· Host0:00
How could I possibly have a zinger for this?
Mike· Host0:02
(laughs) (laughs) What do you know about, uh, June of 2020 to January 2024? What do you know about that period, Peter?
Peter Shamshiri· Host0:09
Look, you can't keep trying to pull zingers out of me for the same book. (laughs) It's outrageous. (laughs) "Oh, what's your zinger for Nudge part two?" I don't fucking know, man. (laughs) I don't... I'm not just an endless font of zingers.
Mike· Host0:22
I mean, you kind of are though, Peter, to be fair.
Peter Shamshiri· Host0:24
Mm-hmm. True.
Mike· Host0:24
It's like one of my favorite things about you.
Peter Shamshiri· Host0:25
Unfortunately- So- ... the, um, the inherent corniness of our zingers, it- (smacks lips) I know. ... it makes it so that coming up with two of them is humiliating. (laughs) Like, if you come up with one cor- corny joke, it's like, "Okay, that's a corny joke about the book or whatever." (laughs) Coming up with two back to back, it's just like, "Ugh." (laughs) It's degrading.
Mike· Host0:43
So are we giving up on them again? I might just have the music kick in randomly at some point.
Peter Shamshiri· Host0:47
What do you mean? You keep putting me in a situation where we have to give up on them.
Mike· Host0:50
(instrumental music) Okay, so this is episode two of our dissection of In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us by Stephen Macedo and Francis Lee, two academics at Princeton.
Peter Shamshiri· Host1:13
What kind of academics?
Mike· Host1:14
(laughs) (laughs) Why don't you, why don't you lead us through a little recap, Peter? What did we learn last episode?
Peter Shamshiri· Host1:21
A couple of political scientists have decided to wade in to the COVID retrospective, uh-