To Republicans, Coronavirus Deaths Are Now Simply The Cost Of Doing Business

In America, dead school children are the cost of unfettered gun rights, and dead grandparents are now the cost of keeping the Dow Jones afloat.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/to-republicans-coronavirus-deaths



Nothing to see here

As a Brit living in America, nothing has made me feel more disconnected from my adopted home than the endless stream of senseless gun deaths and the government’s total inability to act on it. That was until the Coronavirus came to the United States. As the virus tears through the country leaving a truly astonishing trail of death and destruction in its path, the Republican Party has reached truly new levels of sociopathy, and is now actively working to ensure more people die in the coming months. Trump and much of the GOP initially did not take the Coronavirus seriously, and instead spread false information that the virus wasn’t a threat to the US and would, as Trump claimed magically “disappear”. As the virus got worse and disease and medical expert urged Americans to stay home, Republicans around the country made it clear they would not be allowing liberals (scientists and doctors) to dictate what they could and couldn’t do: Republicans went swimming in the Senate pool to prove to their manliness, refused to close down beaches and public areas that would dangerously spread the virus, and would not issue stay at home orders in their states. This despite images of overrun morgues from around the world flooding in, and desperate pleas from doctors to take the threat seriously.

Link to tweet

As the death toll continued to rise and hospitals were inundated with severely sick patients and not enough medical equipment to support them, Republicans were forced to acknowledge reality and accept it was not a Democrat inspired hoax to unseat the president. Rather than take action to stop people dying however, they used the climate change playbook to pivot to a new, equally monstrous position: the Coronavirus was real, but there was nothing they could do about it. This despite the successes seen in places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where the disease was controlled and the governments able to ensure citizens were given adequate financial resources to survive. “There are more important things than living,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Tucker Carlson as he pleaded with grandparents to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the stock market.

Trump’s America

In Trump’s America, perceived economic success is everything, even if it means more deaths than anywhere else on earth. With coordinated, armed astroturf “freedom protests” popping up around the country, Trump and the Republicans Party are now framing their desire to risk lives as a mark of their patriotism and dedication to “freedom”. Just as thousands of gun deaths are accepted each year as the cost of freedom, hundreds of thousands of Americans will now perish in order to preserve the machinations of the Dow Jones. Reported the Guardian this week: A leaked internal White House report predicts the daily death toll from the virus will reach about 3,000 on 1 June, almost double the current tally of about 1,750, the New York Times revealed on Monday. Yet at the same time, Trump has scrapped daily coronavirus task force briefings and marginalized his medical experts in favour of economic officials flooding the airwaves to urge states to reopen for business – even amid rising infection rates….

Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary, said: “Almost by necessity, they are changing their strategy. They are pinning all of their hopes on getting the economy reopened, using their economic spokespeople and hoping that the American public has a high toleration for the death count moving up. It sounds terrible to say and even worse to do. “I think you won’t be seeing much from the scientists any more – the news is that bad – and they’re just going to turn a blind eye to the fact that what they’re doing is going to kill more people, because ultimately the way the president makes decisions is what’s good for his re-election.” So dedicated to pressuring the country into reopening before the pandemic is over are the GOP that Mitch McConnell has suggested blue states — the states taking the Coronavirus seriously — should not receive financial aid from the government. "I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments needs to be thoroughly evaluated," McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt last month. "There's not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations."

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