Life Under A Plutocratic Death Cult

He just…said it:

Trump on coronavirus cases: “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases.”— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 14, 2020

This is on the heels of idiot son-in-law and Minister of Every Portfolio Jared Kushner arguing that juking the stats would fulfill the core mission of propping up stock prices:

“Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it… That advice worked far more powerfully on [Trump] than what the scientists were saying.” https://t.co/yeLMnHQzjS— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) May 14, 2020

So the plan is pretty much “hundreds of thousands of excess deaths” and hope to get the total number undercounted somewhat. Great.

Meanwhile, this is a very good summary of the things a competent response would entail. On one hand, both urge mask-wearing and invest resources in production and distribution, accelerate vaccine development, test, trace and isolation, pay people to stay home. On the other hand, localities need to open up more outdoor spaces, while urging people to social distance — many outdoor spaces allow for social distance, lapses on social distance are less likely to spread the virus, closing some spaces makes others more crowded, and outdoor activity is good and will also make people less likely to engage in much more dangerous activities. Needless to say, we’re not going to get this response from the feds, but states and local governments where Republican “judges” don’t rule that the constitution requires people to be sacrificed for Daddy Trump can do at least some of this.