Reality is a threat to conservatives. Denying reality, in any form, weakens the arguments against conservativism. Claiming untruths is a quick and dirty way to determining who is in and who is out.

Anyone out is the enemy, and therefore evil. Anything they do, say, or believe is evil because they did, said, or believed it.

Anyone who is in is good. Anything they do, say, or believe is good because they did, said, or believed it.

Some may die of preventable diseases, but that's a sacrifice the conservative doesn't even acknowledge because fuck anyone who isn't me.

If you're being nice, you'd say they're contrarians.

If you're being not nice, you'd say they all suffer from oppositional-defiance disorder from decades of right-wing propaganda rotting their brains. Democrats say vaccines are good, therefore they must really be tools of the satanic child molesting one world government globalist cabal to steal our vital fluids and turn all of us into gay transgendered purple-haired soy-latte-drinking they/thems.

Back in 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’"

It is as true today as it was then. The only difference is that since the '80s, the Republican party has weaponized this cult and is using it to undermine our democratic institutions and they have been astonishingly successful of late. Their goal isn't to get their base to get sick and die. The goal is to convince their base that the intellectual elite, the people trying to give them healthcare and lift them out of poverty, are really their enemy. If the GOP base starts respecting intellectualism and, God forbid, educating themselves, then the GOP would be doomed. An educated base would eventually notice that the GOP is curtailing their rights, ruining their environment, shortening their lives, and all but enslaving them and their children. If a small fraction of the base should die and fall off the voter rolls, then that is a sacrifice the GOP is willing to make.

Personally, I had always assumed that such wilful ignorance would result in shorter lifespans for those cultists, and that a sort of unnatural selection would, if not end, at east manage the problem in the long run. But Trump and the pandemic have shown me that the cultists are able to out-breed even the most deadly effects of their ignorance.