"As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?"
That was the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" in an exchange that I've been playing over in my head for a few days now.
What Patrick was suggesting sounds impossibly barbaric: knowingly putting the elderly and sick in a position to get sick and possibly die to stimulate the economy.
But that's the reality of our situation.
The president has continued to push the concept of the coronavirus containment measures lessening by Easter, against the advice of medical professionals. Let's be clear: if that happens before the number of cases are stabilized, it would be catastrophic. People will get sick on a large scale, hospitals will become overwhelmed, and patients will die.
If Dan Patrick's interview proves anything, it's that GOP officials know that this is the toll the president's offer would make. It also proves that it's not their priority.
Yes, the economic situation caused by COVID-19 is serious, and steps should be taken to address it. But those steps simply cannot come at the expense of putting in numerous vulnerable Americans in a position where they could get sick and quite possibly die. That's putting a price on human life.
Trump says he doesn't want "the cure to be worse than the problem." But if the supposed 'cure' comes with the death of innumerable people, that's not a cure at all. We simply cannot allow the government to offer up our elderly, sick, and vulnerable as some kind of perverse collateral damage in the name of boosting the Dow.