GOP blames whom as virus flares?

            Webster defines gall as "brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and indolence."

            House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has a lot of that

            Enough to pave an interstate.

            In his recent dusk-to-dawn prattle-athon trying to stop Joe Biden's social spending initiative, McCarthy said many idiotic things. Topping all was blaming Biden for the current state of the pandemic.

            If we must assay horse manure for purity, this claim is extra-virgin.

            If any partisans are to be blamed for the state of the pandemic it is McCarthy and his Trumpy pals.

            Blaming Biden is like ignoring your electric bill for three months and complaining to the power company because you missed "Real Housewives."

            It's running a red light and blaming the police for not being there to stop you.

            It's letting your milk go rancid and blaming the dairy.

            It's like how too many Trumpy WASPs have acted throughout this health emergency -- like toddlers.

            Trump scandalously downplayed a disease that killed millions. He lied to the nation, though he knew of its severity. Not only did he mock basic prevention, he demanded super-spreader events from which many got ill and some died.

            He caught COVID himself, then made it all about – guess whom? Himself.

            Too bad for all of us without presidential health care.

            In the months since Trump was cast out from the White House, Republicans have been the ones to wage jihad against mask mandates and play troll games about vaccines.

            And they have gotten ill -- and died -- at far higher rates than those aligned with Biden.

            How much higher? The difference is stunning, and indefensible.

            Data from Johns Hopkins University show the Trumpiest counties have nearly three times – 2.78 percent – more new COVID cases than those siding with Biden in 2020.

            This corresponds, naturally, to far higher rates of vaccination among Democrats than those suckled on Tucker Carlson propaganda.

            In the face of the discrepancy between rates of infection in the South, apologists of the Trump kind have asserted that rates of infection among black and brown people have dragged them down.

            As with just about anything else Trump and his cultists have to say about the pandemic, this is not true.

            Data from the Centers for Disease Control show that unvaccinated whites are outpacing people of color in dying from COVID.

            It's true that early in the pandemic the disease disproportionately affected people of color. No more. In almost every state, reports the CDC, white people are dying at higher rates.

            This is the Democrats' fault, say Trumpy Republicans. People have bowed their backs at mandates for masks and vaccines, they say. They would have done the smart thing, we are to believe, if the Great Pretender still was in charge.

            That assumes Trump would not still be mocking science and common sense, lying, and doing anything other than addressing the pandemic as president.

            This is the man who did not meet with his own COVID task force his last eight months in office.

            Of course not. First he needed to watch his impeachment on TV. Then he had a presidential election to overturn. He pretended to be president then, just as he does now. Except now he really isn't president but refuses to acknowledge that fact.

            So, Biden is to blame for being – um – too involved? Apparently this is the charge.

            A spokesman for McCarthy said vaccine mandates are unnecessary because "natural immunity from those that have recovered from infection" will blunt the illness. You know, herd immunity.

            Medical professionals say that those placing their bets on natural immunity have Joe Rogan on the brain.

            The CDC says that previously infected but unvaccinated people have twice the risk of infection as those fully immunized.

            But what does the CDC know? It won't promote horse de-wormer. And it wants to enslave people in face covers.

            The next thing you know it will insist on hand-washing. Whatever happened to our freedom?

            Because of Trump, because of Trumpy governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, simple precautions have assumed the equivalent of war. Yeah, culture war.

            Sure, Kevin McCarthy. Blame the Democrats. With the swath of pain the virus cuts every day through your political base, someone must be held responsible.

            Don't you ever pin "responsible" on the party of Trump.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.