Day 1,159: Trump weighing killing many Americans to reopen economy
Donald Trump sent a not-so-cryptic tweet Sunday evening and retweeted it Monday morning.
In this case, Trump is referring to coronavirus (“THE PROBLEM”) versus Americans isolating to flatten the infection curve and save lives (“THE CURE”). Trump is not being subtle when he’s discussing putting millions of Americans’ lives at risk by sending everyone back to work and letting the chips fall where they may.
A New York Times report greater details Trump’s thinking and how health experts, including those in his administration, are universally against the idea of stopping the aggressive fight against the disease.
[Health o]fficials have said the federal government’s initial 15-day period for social distancing is vital to slowing the spread of the virus, which has already infected more than 40,000 people in the United States. But Mr. Trump and a chorus of conservative voices have begun to suggest that the shock to the economy could hurt the country more than deaths from the virus.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said his administration would reassess whether to keep the economy shuttered after the initial 15-day period ends next Monday, saying it could extend another week and that certain parts of the country could reopen sooner than others, depending on the extent of infections.
“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” Mr. Trump said during a briefing at the White House. “America will, again, and soon, be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. Lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
Even the economic risks of opening too soon are serious based on real world evidence.
Any push to loosen the new limits on commerce and movement would contradict the consensus advice of public health officials, risking a surge in infections and deaths from the virus. Many economists warn that abruptly reopening the economy could backfire, overwhelming an already stressed health care system, sowing uncertainty among consumers, and ultimately dealing deeper, longer-lasting damage to growth.
The recent rise of cases in Hong Kong, after there had been an easing of the spread of the virus, is something of an object lesson about how ending strict measures too soon can have dangerous consequences. Yet places like China, which took the idea of lockdown to the extreme, have managed to flatten the curve.
Other Republican officials are on TV openly discussing the idea of sacrificing the oldest Americans — though many younger Americans will surely get sick and die as well — all to improve companies’ bottom lines in the short-term.
Trump is, of course, up for reelection in just eight months, and that fact is no doubt affecting his thinking. He’s not prioritizing Americans’ lives, but rather thinking about whether he can get reelected if the present situation stays on the current path.
By sending everyone back into the world in a week or two, Trump is hoping for the minute chance that things immediately turn around economically and that the level of illnesses miraculously tapers off to boot. On the opposite side of that equation, hundreds of thousands of Americans could die and the economy could be tanked for many years.
That’s a risk that no American president has ever taken, considering the downsides. The status quo of prolonged isolation means a recession that most analysts predict would last slightly longer than the life of the virus itself, especially with strong economic intervention by the government.
There’s a logical response that has consensus of top scientists and doctors: short-term pain for long-term gain. Isolate now and more people live; don’t and more people die. Trump wants to eliminate the short-term pain entirely and just hope that the U.S. is magically immune from evidence that’s been proven around the world.
1,159 days in, 303 to go
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