Fauci, Pelosi, and Biden who, took until May, preached that it was overblown and exaggerated by the Liberal Media!
But it's not exaggerated or overblown, as you said yourself when you said that "we knew" how deadly it was in January.
So you're alternating between: the virus is deadly/the Democrats exaggerated the virus' deadliness.
Those two statements are in direct contradiction.
It's cognitive dissonance.

