Opinion: What GOP lawmakers who refused to wear masks during Capitol lockdown need now

Democratic members of Congress were captured on video imploring those Republicans to mask up.

Pramila Jayapal told New York Magazine's Rebecca Traister last week that she feared she had been exposed in "a superspreader event" because, when members of Congress were brought to a secured room during the attack, "there were over 100 people and many were Republicans not wearing masks."

In an interview with McClatchy news service Friday, Dr.

Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that the US Capitol riot, broadly speaking, was likely a coronavirus "surge event" and "is going to have public health consequences."

In a statement after she tested positive for the virus, Jayapal said: "Only hours after President Trump incited a deadly assault on our Capitol, our country, and our democracy, many Republicans still refused to take the bare minimum Covid-19 precaution and simply wear a damn mask in a crowded room during a pandemic -- creating a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack."

She called for "serious fines to be immediately levied on every single Member who refuses to wear a mask in the Capitol" and for "any Member who refuses to wear a mask [to] be immediately removed from the floor by the Sergeant at Arms."

House Democrats are now pushing for a rule that would fine any member $500 the first time they don't wear a mask on the House floor, and $2,500 for any subsequent offense.

That's the absolute minimum that should happen.

(Greene's office told CNN, "Congresswoman Greene is a healthy adult who tested negative for COVID at the White House just this week. She does not believe healthy Americans should be forced to muzzle themselves with a mask. America needs to reopen and get back to normal." The others did not respond to CNN's request for comment.)

Would universal mask-wearing have definitely prevented the virus from spreading among members of Congress all trapped together in a small room?

But we also know that wearing masks significantly reduces the risk of infection.

And while we can't be certain exactly where the infected lawmakers contracted Covid, we do know that some of their colleagues didn't care either way.

They and others Republicans have politicized mask-wearing and further basic public health measures -- and they have stood by this President as he failed to handle this deadly crisis.

And it was the feckless, willfully dangerous actions of mask-eschewing Republicans in Congress that put the health of their own colleagues at risk, even as they hid together from a rampaging mob of terrorists.

We don't know how many more members of Congress will test positive for Covid-19, just as it's impossible to tally the number of Americans who would have avoided illness or death had all Republican leaders encouraged public health best practices.