As a conservative, I can tell you that no one cares about this. The COVID pandemic has been going on now for 500 days. Yes, people have died, and that's sad, but the pandemic has hit every part of the world hard no matter how few or many restrictions have been implemented. The reality is that many of us, myself included, believe that masks, lockdowns, and other health measures do not work, and they also cause great economic and societal damage. I personally do not trust the "science" that suggests otherwise.
Sure, your fellow conservatives don't care. But it will haunt him in the general election. He's now unelectable for a general election.
It's also not true that the virus has hit every place hard regardless of restrictions implemented. There are clearly differences in the number of hospitalizations in areas that took it seriously and got people vaccinated versus say the South where it's currently raging out of control. If you look at some of the Asian countries which immediately masked up their death rate is much much lower.
In some cases blue areas like New York got hit just as hard as red areas like Florida (currently) but that's obviously because the virus was spreading before people realized there was a crisis. Red states like Florida have no excuse, they had advanced notice and could have prepared but chose not to.
