Long ago, men put a brake on toxic masculinity.

In dealing with the coronavirus pandemic "female leaders around the world, from (Chancellor Angela) Merkel to Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand to Tsai Ing-Wen of Taiwan, have won praise for their handling of the crisis", wrote Anna North. Women communicate better and "may feel less of a  need to live up to expectations of crisis management that are grounded in traditional -- even toxic -- masculinity". Psychological research has shown "conservatives are psychologically tuned to see threat, and so they fear change. Liberals are tuned to prize change, and so they downplay threat," wrote Ezra Klein. "But here we are, in the midst of a pandemic, and it's conservatives seemingly dismissing the danger, opening states and counties prematurely, refusing to wear masks," while it is "the liberals who're locked in their homes, who are warning the worst is yet to come". Political psychologists in the US think that it is because liberals are caring while conservatives are partisan and xenophobic. The Democratic Party, expected to be left-wing liberal, holds veto-proof super-majorities in both houses of California's assembly and imposed a lockdown early. "On March 20, when a statewide stay-at-home order was put into place across California (one had already gone into effect four days earlier in the Bay Area), about 1,000 cases had been detected in the state and about 20 people had died," wrote Kelsey Piper. "Now there have been more than 75,000 cases reported in California." Is it because Governor of California Gavin Newsom may be a Democrat but is a man? President Donald Trump has been blamed for the US having the highest number of cases with over 1.6 million infections and over 96,000 deaths. "A study has estimated there may have been 36,000 fewer coronavirus-related deaths had the US entered lockdown a week earlier in March." So was it toxic masculinity that stopped Trump from declaring a nationwide lockdown? According to constitutional experts the president does not have the authority to declare a national lockdown. "A national lockdown, I think, is pretty far out of bounds for the president," said Keith Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell professor of politics at Princeton University's Department of Politics and an expert in constitutional interpretation. The US Constitution was written in 1787 by men who were influenced by writings of men like John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu, at a time when married women were considered their husbands' properties and women were not allowed to vote. "The United States on Wednesday accused China of employing border clashes with India to try to shift the status quo, and encouraged New Delhi to resist." Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi are all men. The combination is getting toxic.