In coronavirus pandemic, Trump allies say they're ready to die for the economy.... hopefully they do kill themselves
On the Tuesday airing of his program on BlazeTV, right-wing commentator Glenn Beck said that at 56 he is in the “danger zone” for the virus and would also make the sacrifice.
“I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working,” Beck said. “Even if we all get sick, I would rather die than kill the country. Because it’s not the economy that’s dying, it’s the country.”
A corollary argument is that the loss of jobs and incomes from prolonged social isolation would eventually lead to more deaths — from poverty and psychological distress — than might result from COVID-19.
In the video, Beck is alone in a room, socially distant from anyone who could give him the virus and not apparently facing the same risks as people without TV shows, such as health care workers, police and grocery store workers.
Sacrificing the elderly for the good of the economy
runs counter to Beck’s position a decade ago, when he rose to prominence during President Barack Obama’s tenure by railing against so-called death panels that he said would be created under the Affordable Care Act to ration health care. “We care about the elderly,”
said Beck in 2009, adding, “We value life in this country, and when you start devaluing life, then you’re in trouble.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo took issue with the ethical choices implied by Trump’s priorities, saying, “My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable, and we’re not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable, and we’re not going to put a dollar figure on human life.”
The policy dilemma replicates on a national scale a well-known exercise in ethics known as the “trolley problem,” which asks whether it is justified to kill another person to avoid a larger number of deaths. It posits a situation in which a runaway vehicle is heading toward a large number of people — unless someone throws a switch that will divert it onto a different track, where only one person would be endangered.
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