Contrarian brain, an incurable condition
By 
The objections to that horrible Atlantic piece were not to its thesis that nobody in Real America ™ cares about COVID — they were to its thesis that nobody should care about COVID, because ultimately it’s no big deal.
The way these elite networks work. is that the Atlantic’s editors publish a horrible piece of reactionary bullshit, they get big pushback from everybody who notices, and then Even the Liberal Matt Yglesias says well actually the article was right to argue [X] even though [X] wasn’t anything like the article’s actual point. Then the editors say “see, you had nothing to be upset about, you’re just too woke and you don’t understand the Heartland ™.”
Rinse and repeat.
It was contrarian reactionary garbage, but this is about the 17,523rd time that Yglesias’s well actually tick has gotten him to twitter something that inadvertently defends contrarian reactionary garbage.
That’s a lot of inadvertence.