The sudden explosion of COVID-19 cases caught North America by surprise. Yes, many of us were watching the developments in Europe with a wary eye, worrying about testing failures and expecting the problem to grow. But few were anticipating the zero-to-a-hundred eruption of cases that turned normal life into a ghost-city lockdown in just a handful of days.

But it’s one thing to underestimate a pandemic, and it’s another to completely deny that it exists. Weeks before the coronavirus closed most of the civilized world, right-wing pundits blanketed the airwaves, arguing that the only appropriate response was to laugh into the growing stormclouds.

One of the better-known examples is Drew Pinsky — ostensibly a medically trained doctor — who devoted hours of airtime to attacking supposed COVID-19 hysteria. At one point he famously described the risk of dying from coronavirus as less likely than being killed by an asteroid (an event responsible for virtually no recorded fatalities in all of human history).

To his (very minimal) credit, Pinsky recanted his coronavirus claims after lockdowns swept the country. He released the usual deflection-filled non-apology (it wasn’t just me, it was the best information at the time, I was actually right after I was wrong). Critics wondered how he had managed to ignore the unfolding crisis in Italy while he confidently asserted the harmlessness of coronavirus. But this is what it means to be publicly wrong. You can either admit a moment of colossal ignorance, or pad your blindspots with excuses and claim you were partly right. (And shouldn’t everyone just praise you for your timely correction?)

This was the way I expected the drama to unfold, with Dr. Drew’s mea culpa just the first in a series of excuse-laden right-wing apologies.

And then things took a darker turn.