President Trump is now saying that regardless of the people who will surely die if we abandon efforts to contain Covid-19, we simply have no choice but to restart the economy in two weeks because of the strain it will put on the economy, resulting in greater pain. He wants to walk away from the problem with his fortune intact and let the American people take the haircut for his failed attempt at managing this crisis. Sound familiar?
Yet it is curious that both China and South Korea have managed to contain the contagion without resorting to what basically amounts to allowing the weak to die and millions more to suffer lung damage in order to attain herd immunity, which is what Trump is effectively proposing.
Experts have dismissed out of hand the option of herd immunity because it is unnecessarily draconian and because better approaches are available to us, as witnessed in China and South Korea.
China’s economy is roughly the same size as ours and they have three times as many people with more industry yet they quickly shut it down through aggressive containment efforts. South Korea is a highly industrialized nation with a high density population, yet they shut it down through aggressive testing combined with containment. So what is different in the United States and why are Republicans pushing this idea at this time?
If this were the plot of a mystery novel it would have a single chapter because we all understand why Republicans are telegraphing a desperation move in two weeks. This is going off the rails and Trump is clueless how to run, well anything, let alone a country as big as this. Neither are the sycophants he surrounded himself with going to be any help, or the ideological fanatics running his Party who cannot even acknowledge that government has a role to play in all of this. Their only play is to let people die. And this is the core of their belief system anyways. Why would they not do this?
As for Trump, this will simply be his seventh bankruptcy. Everyone around him goes down in flames while he heads out to the golf course for another 9 holes. The only difference this time is the sheer magnitude of the devastation left in his wake.