White House meetings to discuss reaction to Covid-19 are secret and all public health experts are excluded.

Republican leaders today do not generally worry about embarrassing disclosures. They figure that their cloud of disinformation will prevent all adverse consequences. Whatever they are hiding, it must be much worse than usual.

Perhaps they are trying to maximize billionaires' opportunity to practice disaster capitalism, a.k.a. the "shock doctrine".

Perhaps they are trying to create, rather than avoid, an election crisis.

Republicans have stolen several presidential elections recently, and some elections for lower offices as well. I would not put it past them to plan to make the epidemic worse. Their previous budget cuts have undermined programs that would have helped respond to it.

Recall how Hurricane Katrina showed that Dubya had undermined FEMA, with disastrous results.

Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republicans believe that Covid-19 is not a real danger, just as they believe that global heating is not a real danger.

In a month they will start dying, and would be able to recognize the statements their leaders have made so far as lies. But by then they will have been told to believe that those statements were never made at all.