I honestly believe that McConnell and the POTUS are that cynical. I think they’re willing to win at all costs, including giving up many lives and forsaking the Constitution. Our current form of crony capitalism is nasty. If they actually cared about people, they’d also address climate disruption and the everyday poisoning of neighborhoods where Dupont spews PFAS or TCE exposure at Camp Lejeune.

I don’t think Republican voters are all that cynical. And I don’t fault people who want to operate their businesses. Unless they ignore the data. C-19 is likely at least 20x worse than the average seasonal flu. I made a table compiling data to compare the two, in particular using infection mortality rates and reproduction numbers.

The goal hasn’t changed, at least as I understand it. It was always to minimize harm. That includes deaths, which go up any time hospitals are overwhelmed. And now that curves are flattening, states are starting to open back up. Unfortunately a lot of them lack the testing and contact tracing capacity to do so responsibly. I fear for uncontrolled outbreaks due to still flying relatively blind. And I hold accountable the Republicans and neoliberals who cut public health budgets and gave the green light to moving production overseas (as I mentioned in the original piece). They failed us by focusing primarily on short-term corporate profit.

Right-wing politicians and pundits appear to be seeking to frame the reopening debate in all-or-nothing terms. This is a tried-and-true tactic. I’m not buying it. Nobody wants shutdowns. They’re a blunt tool for emergency use only. The question is as we open, how well will we be able to use other tools (namely testing and contact tracing) to control outbreaks?

I agree with pretty much all of what you’re saying in terms of reopening schools and non-COVID healthcare. It’s also clear that we haven’t eliminated the threat of spikes in infections and resulting deaths. And won’t for a long time. So we have to be smart. That begins with debate over actual differences in opinions about reopening vs. using straw man arguments and false binaries like economic vs. human health. They obviously overlap. Or small business owners vs. workers. There are clearly some greedy AF big business owners who want workers to get back to their jobs without providing basic protective measures. F that noise. All the owners I know want their employees to be as safe as possible.

Folks on the Left hate lockdowns too. We’d like time machines in order to use the ready-to-roll WHO-provided tests in February as part of an effective federally-coordinated response like in South Korea or Taiwan. And now we want to go back to work. With testing and contact tracing like an advanced country would have.