june 2004

Eugene Goodman is an American hero. At a pivotal moment on January 6, the veteran United States Capitol Police officer single-handedly prevented untold bloodshed. Staring down an angry, advancing mob, he retreated up a marble staircase, calmly wielding his baton to delay his pursuers while calling out their position to his fellow officers. At the top of the steps, still alone and standing just a few yards from the chamber where senators and Vice President Mike Pence had been certifying the Electoral College’s vote, Goodman strategically lured dozens of the mayhem-minded away from an unguarded door to the Senate floor.

The leader of that flank of the mob, later identified by the FBI as Douglas Jensen, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a red-white-and-blue Q—the insignia of the delusional QAnon conspiracy theory. Its supporters believe that a righteous Donald Trump is leading them in a historic quest to expose the U.S. government’s capture by a global network of cannibalistic pedophiles: not just “deep state” actors in the intelligence community, but Chief Justice John Roberts and a dozen-plus senators, including me. Now Trump’s own vice president is supposedly in on it, too. According to the FBI, Jensen “wanted to have his T-shirt seen on video so that ‘Q’ could ‘get the credit.’”

This story contains mild spoilers for the first three episodes of WandaVision.

After 23 films, even a casual Marvel fan knows what it means to be an Avenger: fighting for those who can’t, against any threat, be it corporate greed or the surveillance state or a purple alien. Yet, in the series WandaVision, which premiered yesterday on Disney+, one of these storied Avengers rejects her duty in the second episode. When a mysterious man in a beekeeper outfit clambers out of a sewer and gazes menacingly at Wanda (played by Elizabeth Olsen) and her husband, Vision (Paul Bettany), she doesn’t raise her hands, flick her wrists, and wiggle her fingers to produce her signature red energy. “No,” she says quietly, dismissing the threat. The scene then rewinds to the moments before she and Vision went outside. She changes their dialogue so that they stay indoors. Back to their regularly scheduled programming.

What do I do now?

COVID-19 diagnoses start with a barrage of grueling decisions and paralyzing worries. Did I infect anyone else? Whom will I tell? Where can I isolate? Should I go to the hospital? Will I be okay?

Millions of Americans have fallen sick with this virus, and we’ve seen the full kaleidoscope of ways people react and cope with illness. Some have dutifully rung up contact tracers and locked themselves in total isolation. In March, after a 63-year-old man in Los Angeles broke out in coughing fits and couldn’t get hold of a coronavirus test, he spent five days quarantining in his 2009 Mercedes. Other people have been an epidemiologist’s worst nightmare. Someone in southern Oregon kept going to work after falling sick, super-spreading the virus and killing seven people. A groom in Texas reportedly tested positive one day and went on with his maskless wedding party the next. “Oh, no, no, no, don’t freak out,” a bridesmaid told the very freaked-out photographer. “He doesn’t have symptoms. He’s fine.”

As terrifying as it was to watch the attempted coup unfold on January 6, the news that afternoon offered some cause for relief. Although the U.S. Capitol was overrun, few injuries were initially reported. At first, it appeared that only one woman died in the melee. No lawmakers were harmed. The Electoral College certification went forward, despite some delay.

Every day since, as more videos and reporting have emerged, it’s become clear how dangerous the insurrection truly was. As my colleague Elaine Godfrey, who was in the crowd, wrote, “The violence could have been even worse. Some of the rioters clearly wanted it to be.” This was more than a group of people swept up in the emotions of the moment. Within the mob were radicals plotting to kill or kidnap the vice president and members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The rioters came within moments of catching up to Vice President Mike Pence.

If you’re like most Americans, there’s a good chance you’re going to wear a cloth mask today. Doing so makes sense. It remains the official recommendation in the United States, and it is something we’ve both advocated since the beginning of the pandemic. Both of us wrote articles as far back as March urging people to wear homemade cloth masks. We’re also the authors (along with 17 other experts) of a paper titled “An Evidence Review of Face Masks Against COVID,” which was just published in peer-reviewed form in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But it’s past time for better solutions to be available to the public.

We first released the paper as a preprint back in April, and it took nine months to go through peer review. We’re happy that it’s published but, to be honest, we’re also deeply disappointed that it’s still relevant. We’d hoped that by 2021 supply chains would have ramped up enough to ensure that everyone had better masks. Cloth masks, especially homemade ones, were supposed to be a stopgap measure. Why are so many of us still wearing them?