Method To The Madness?
Look at who will be the majority of casualties in the reopening of the economy. Probably immigrant, minority and low-income workers who tend to vote Democratic. Is Stephen Miller, or others of his perverse persuasions, whispering in Trump’s ear that this might be a big electoral win strategy for the coming election?
This is an incredibly dark speculation, but desperate demagogues do desperate things. There are well-known Social Darwinists who would view these casualties as perfectly acceptable and “natural” collateral damage in the pursuit of their mercenary agenda.
Here’s an example reported by the NY Times: In a portion of the leaked audio, Mr. Abbott (Texas Gov. )says, “How do we know reopening businesses won’t result in faster spread or more cases of Covid-19?” “Listen, the fact of the matter is, pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening, whether you want to call it a reopening of business or just a reopening of society in the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase in spread. It’s almost ipso facto. The more that you have people out there, the greater the possibility there is for transmission. And so the goal never has been to get transmission of Covid-19 down to zero.” This is the polite, understated attitude of the far-right yahoos. They know that there will be more deaths, predictably many more, but the economy (money) is more important than lives, especially if they the lives of liberals.
Here, in contrast, is a truly excellent and highly detailed plan for how to safely open our economy and keep it running safely. It is quite long and technical, but there is a good summary on pages 6+7.
I doubt that Trump or 99% of his administration would have the motivation or the attention span to actually read this report from experts at Harvard, but they should.