On Tuesday March 24th in a Fox News Townhall, Trump said, “I’d love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” Perhaps Pence suggested Easter to symbolize America’s rebirth. No doubt Trump envisions himself coming out of the Tomb as our Messiah. He expects to resurrect the stock market–and his reelection chances.
Trump will taint Easter with his love of money over human life. It’s par for his course, just like his closed down golf courses.
I didn’t realize until today how corona closures have hit @realdonaldtrump’s biggest revenue generators. Six out of the top seven. (And the one that’s open is doing pretty bad, too). pic.twitter.com/9i6Sn97udm
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) March 24, 2020
Trump ignores experts whose conclusions aren’t what he wants and so he finds different experts. On the Rachel Maddow Show, New York Times health and science reporter Donald McNeil Jr. uses an apt simile.
What he’s [Trump] talking about “15 days and the doors are open”is like having a lead lined room next to the Chernobyl power plant and you fling open the doors and say. “Hey the flowers are still sprouting out there, it’s a sunny day I think it’s okay to go out.” It’s not okay to go out.
There are things you haven’t seen yet because so many people are getting infected but they’re not going to be hospitalized for on average another 10 days after they show symptoms.
What would it take for Trump to change his views?
It’s only going to be forced home in the same way that AIDS was forced home to Ronald Reagan after 4 years of not mentioning it by the death of his friend Rock Hudson. Something is going to have to wake the President up to the realization that this is a very serious danger including to him and his family.
Trump keeps calling coronavirus the invisible enemy. In the miniseries Chernobyl one of the scientists had to explain that the reactor core was shooting out three million billion trillion invisible bullets in the air that will kill people.
Opening up America too soon is like walking out of a lead-lined rooms outside the Chernobyl power plant thinking that the invisible bullets have stopped and refusing to use a Geiger counter to test the radiation.
Experts have been pointing out the need to keep the social distancing measures in place. From Axios, Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said in a Twitter thread to drop all the measures in place would be to accept that coronavirus patients “will get sick in extraordinary numbers all over the country, far beyond what the U.S. health care system could bear.”
Anyone advising the end of social distancing now, needs to fully understand what the country will look like if we do that. COVID would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the yr ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country. 15/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020
Inglesby went on: “To drop all these measures now would be to accept that COVID pts [patients] will get sick in extraordinary numbers all over the country, far beyond what the US health care system could bear.”
Trump playing God will kill people in his quest to resurrect “the economy” which he sees as a reflection of his will.
But as my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio explains, the economy is not an ungovernable force of nature. It’s not an entity to worship and sacrifice lives to. It is a system made by humans and we can make changes to that system to reflect our priorities.
If large numbers of people have to die in order for the economy to work, the economy doesn’t work.
— Anat Shenker-Osorio (@anatosaurus) March 24, 2020
“Trump’s economic advisers, including Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow, channeled the views they were receiving from the business community that keeping the country shut down wasn’t worth the economic pain.” Kevin Liptak, CNN, March 24, 2020
Trump’s economic advisers want to kill people rather than modify a system. To paraphrase Charleston Heston, The economy is people. We can build our economy and help our people. The economy takes second place to a body count.