Has nothing to do with owning the conservatives. It’s recognizing that these policies and attitudes will cost lives and inflict suffering on a lot of innocent people. The more traction they get, and the more time they have to become entrenched, the harder it will be to roll them back. Since the pandemic people have been reframing their anti-vax positions as being religious convictions, and treating the right to spread disease and oppose public health as a fundamental freedom. That kind of opposition might take decades, or even generations to overcome.

One of the few things that can prevent that trend is an outbreak of something truly terrifying. Something visibly awful with a high mortality rate will cause most of these people to suddenly be ok with anything that keeps them protected. Better that these idiots get mugged by reality in a swift and brutal fashion than letting them linger and cause the slow and steady stream of human suffering. Ultimately, the fast and painful lesson will kill far fewer people than the attrition that will come from many smaller, milder outbreaks that spread outward in wave after wave for the foreseeable future.