Hiltzik: GOP policy will increase the number of deaths from coronaviruses

Not so long ago, barely a decade ago, in fact, Republicans and Conservatives were trying to derail the Affordable Care Act by claiming that it would establish death committees to refuse care to the sick, the elderly and the disabled.

How times have changed. Now, some Republicans and Conservatives are speaking out in favor of sacrificing human health to better restore health on the stock market.

It is a radical overhaul of human morality: about 80 years ago, the Americans sacrificed their lives and their treasures to defeat a threat to the very existence of civilization. Today heard the argument that we should sacrifice the principles of basement civilization so that survivors can live without sacrificing their comfort.

Heres Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, 69, discharging Monday for Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

I don’t live in fear of COVID-19, he said, referring to the disease caused by the new coronavirus. What I live in fear is what happens in the country … As an elderly person, are you ready to try your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all Americans love for your children and little ones -children? If it’s the exchange, I’m fully … Let’s go back to work, come back to life.

Patrick was channeling President Trump, who tweeted the day before his desire to end the social distancing and quarantine practices put in place to fight the pandemic by Easter April 12.

Trump’s theme, as he repeated on Tuesday in a Fox News show, was that a lot of people in my opinion, more people will die if we allow this to continue. We have to go back to work. Our people want to go back to work.

He predicted suicides by the thousands if we continue the social distancing. He suggested that the remedy could be worse than the problem.

Trump’s words have been taken up in the conservative political world. Before exploring this surge of feverish amorality, we must observe that the idea of ​​ending the national practice of social distancing by April 12 is considered by the medical and epidemiological community as incredibly premature.

Signs have already emerged in California, New York and abroad that this method is starting to work but is just getting started. The lifting of quarantines before time would invite a resurgence of contagion, at the cost of immense lives and means of subsistence.

I think people might have a wrong interpretation [were] Just going to raise everything, Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who remains the most measured voice of the crisis, said this week. It is not going to happen.

He said that data, not feeling or emotion, should dictate how and when to allow social activity to resume.

Proponents of the strengths of unscientific notions seem to attach great importance to the principle of social Darwinism, namely that the strong will survive and the weak good, we cannot stop worrying about it.

Foxes Brit Hume (76 and a grandparent) called Patrick’s suggestion that the elderly sacrifice themselves effectively for the sake of their offspring and completely reasonable point of view. He noted that thousands of Americans die from the flu every year, but we are not closing the economy to save all the lives threatened by the disease; we just don’t do it.

Hume, clearly no expert in epidemiology, simply does not distinguish between the flu and the new coronavirus. The flu does not create a wave of patients that overwhelms hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units to the point that its patients, let alone other patients, cannot get treatment.

The flu does not create a demand for life-saving respirators for patients or protective equipment for doctors and nurses that cannot be satisfied, threatening the lives of providers. But these phenomena have occurred in places like Italy and are surfacing in parts of the United States like New York. Hume, apparently a journalist, should listen to those on the front line if he wants to know what he is talking about before pontificating.

Some supporters of the Trumpian view have tried to dress their view as a sober weighting of options.

Extreme reactionary measures to the pandemic focus only on the benefits of these actions, completely ignoring the costs, wrote a contributor to the federalist, a right-wing site.

Of course, it seems very foolish to talk about considering costs. It seems difficult to wonder if the nation would do better to let a few hundred thousand people die … However, honestly facing reality is not insensitive, and even refusing to wonder if the current answer constitutes an evil even greater than the one it intends to mitigate would be cowardly.

Another federalist writer offered to take a page from the chickenpox parties of the day before the chickenpox vaccine, when parents deliberately expose their children to an infected classmate in order to give them lifelong immunity against the virus. He suggested that the parties against the coronaviruses would help create collective immunity that could slow or stop the spread of the new pathogen.

Experts have argued that it is mostly nuts. No one can be sure that they will get COVID-19 in a life-threatening form, and the road to collective immunity from a new virus is long and unpredictable. It should be instructive that chicken pox evenings are totally useless today, thanks to a vaccine available since 1995.

There is also an emerging view on the religious right that aggressive social measures against the coronavirus will somehow alter the gods.

There’s a demonic side to sentimentality of saving lives at all costs, wrote R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, a right-wing Christian site. Satan reigns over a kingdom in which the ultimate power of death is announced morning, noon and evening … The massive cessation of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse, even demonic atmosphere. Governor Cuomo and other officials insist that the power of the dead must govern our actions.

Underlying all of this is the idea that the economy is made up almost entirely of equity and bond portfolios. This is the category error of confusing the game’s dashboard. The idea that human lives should be sacrificed to save business revenues is, basically, medieval.

The country we live in is not the stock market. It is the life of the people, their families, their aspirations. Trump and his cronies offer to sacrifice them to save a mythical economy measured in the short-term hesitations of the Dow Jones industrial average.

What is most despicable for those who suggest exposing people to the ravages of a new virus is that most of them think they are exempt. It is rarely the martyrs themselves who speak brilliantly of the virtues of martyrdom.

People like Patrick, who profess the will to put their own life on the line. I don’t buy it. Patrick claims that he’s received a wave of support from seniors like him. I don’t buy that either. Patrick and Trump believe that they live in a bubble that will keep COVID-19 from their doorstep and will therefore not pose any threat to their loved ones. They are wrong. The virus does not respect these borders.

About a week ago, a young high school graduate, Brady Sluder, made himself famous by giving an interview at a spring break in Florida in which he said: If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I will not stop partying. I had just had a good time. What must happen will happen.

When he got home, he realized the madness of his ways and published sincere apologies via Instagram. Listen to your communities and do as the health authorities say, he writes. Life is precious. Do not be arrogant and think you are invincible like me … Apologies do not justify my behavior. I’m just aware of my mistakes and take full responsibility for my actions.

Sluder is not yet in his twenties. Patrick and Trump have at least four decades on him. When will they learn?