The Surrender

Donald Trump has surrendered. He's made clear he no longer interested in paring coronavirus infections and deaths as much as possible. He wants to "open up" the economy as soon as possible and establish the pretense that everything's normal and fine (details here).

Death is inevitable anyway, he's inferring, so stop making a fuss. The GOP, which styled itself as the pro-life party because of its antiabortion stance, is loudly applauding this pro-death stance.

But the media and by extension the public must not allow him to get away with that, so argues an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post (link here). Trump's administration and his apologists, for instance, are trying to make coronavirus deaths normal by comparing them with inflated auto accident figures.

"Car accidents aren’t contagious," the linked piece retorts.

The piece continues with a reminder that Trump's attempt to trivialize coronavirus deaths "allows more deaths. It makes it easier for the horrors of virus deaths to fall off the broadcast news chyron, to divert resources away from public health and for future politicians to treat the next pandemic even more glibly."

Trump, hopefully, is setting himself up to fail. A large majority of Americans — two-thirds to three-quarters, depending on the survey — oppose opening now, including a majority of Republicans. Let's hope that opposition holds fast.