In normal times, we’d be dealing with the standard conservative playbook. In just this century, we’ve seen GOP cynics flog a long list of whatever’s handy to foment terror, including:

The “migrant caravan”

The “9/11 mosque”

“Death panels”

Bathrooms

MS-13

The “war on Christmas”

“WMDs”

The Mexico border

Ebola

That last one is particularly instructive. In the run-up to the 2014 midterms, Republicans ginned up fears about the spread of Ebola in order to damage President Obama and Democrats. Donald Trump gleefully partook, spewing hysteria across a hundred tweets that summer and fall. But immediately after the election, which duly saw Republicans romp, Trump and his entire party suddenly stopped caring about the disease altogether. (Trump, as usual, was a little bit slow on the uptake: He tweeted twice more about Ebola after Election Day, but then fell quiet.)

Experiences like these are why an insider like Ingraham knows that GOP leaders can silence their false alarms whenever they choose—why she wants a grownup to turn the lights back on and reassure her that it’ll all be over soon.

Only this time, it won’t be, because this panic is 100% real. 15,000 people across the world have now died of COVID-19, and, terribly, more will. Only dramatic action will save us, but Ingraham and her ilk have been so brainwashed by a lifetime of crying “wolf!” that they cannot differentiate between the lies they peddle and the truth that now confronts us.

But Ingraham’s childishness cannot be treated as a minor source of grim amusement. She in fact speaks for a wide swath of conservatives, including Trump himself, who on Monday declared his intention to surrender to the coronavirus and send people back to work in 15 days as part of his deranged plan to “save” the economy. If Trump and his acolytes actually follow through, though, it’ll only make the pandemic explode once again with renewed furor—and Laura Ingraham will rue that she got her wish.