Trump is lying — keeping the lockdown won't kill more people than coronavirus, and I have the economic proof

At 2,800 deaths a day from Covid-19, that ain’t in the cards. So stop whining and fix this

Never at a loss for words, or half-thought-out arguments, titans of the American right from President Donald Trump to Senator Ted Cruz have latched on to a doozy: You have to reopen the economy despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, quickly, lest a wave of suicides, domestic battery and the like overwhelm even the death toll from coronavirus.

“That’s gonna cost real lives,” Cruz said in an interview. “Our objective should be to save lives, and that means we need to fight this pandemic and get people back to work.’’

Apparently, the schools where Trump and Cruz studied math have been closed for longer than the 34-day stretch of distance learning we’re soldiering through where I live.

Yesterday, coronavirus killed 2,763 Americans, according to Worldometer. On average, in the US 129 people take their lives each day — almost half using guns that are more lightly regulated in America than basically anywhere on earth. Domestic violence, as unacceptable and pervasive as it is, killed 2,237 in 2017. Again, guns are a major culprit — and Cruz’s opposition to closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole” in the Violence Against Women Act to prevent domestic abusers from owning firearms makes him come to that discussion with unclean hands.

And in the days of coronavirus, we’re all sticklers for clean hands.

The argument that the economic cost of quarantining to stop Covid-19 is too high has already outlived its usefulness. A month ago, when the death toll was only 23, you could make it with a straight face. Thursday’s news that 5.4 million people filed for unemployment insurance last week is a big number — and the 22.03 million who have filed in the last four weeks is even bigger. No doubt about it.

But 2,763 people a day dying is a huge number. A massive number. Consider these comparisons.

At 32,588 US deaths and counting, most of them in the last nine days, we’re on pace to match the 33,000 US combat casualties in the Korean War today. That war lasted 37 months. The 47,000-plus US combat deaths in Vietnam are the next milestone — at 2,500 a day, that will take until next week. Vietnam went on from Presidents Eisenhower through Ford. The First World War’s death toll would take another three days to match.

Even the Second World War brought about 240 US combat deaths daily.

Trump takes grief for comparing the fight against coronavirus to a war — not least because, as wartime presidents go, he looks a lot like James Buchanan right now, helplessly watching Confederate states secede in early 1861. But looking at pure in-combat death tolls, the fight against coronavirus can be equated to war with a straight face now.

Which brings us to the question of sacrifice, and what we’re willing to give up — or not — in order to win a war.

All through both the First and Second World Wars, Americans tolerated rationing that made sure the war effort had the support and material it needed. Marginal income tax rates ran as high as 94 per cent during the second war, and consumers’ usage of everything from gasoline to butter was strictly regulated.

It must have been at least as much of a pain in the neck as sheltering in place for a few weeks, but compared to the tension of wondering if your son or husband was OK it couldn’t have been much. My parents graduated high school during the war, and never told their kids a single story about wartime restrictions. It didn’t even register, really.

Which makes it hard to take very seriously the scattered protests popping up against quarantine restrictions governors have imposed to slow Covid-19’s spread. In Michigan, where protestors converged by car on the state capital in Lansing — and most, apparently, stayed in their cars rather than mingle with the relative handfuls of Confederate flag-brandishing idiots who dominated press attention — one flash point was Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s restrictions on garden store operations. People seemed not to understand why outdoor work isn’t exempted from emergency restrictions on non-essential work. And they may have a point, but...

2,763 people died on that day, and Tea Party Wannabes are upset that their tomatoes may get planted a few weeks late? Awww.

Texas will go back to work — as will we all — when something like California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed framework of testing and contact tracing can be put in place. To do that, first the daily death toll and load of new diagnoses have to slow meaningfully, as they are showing fitful signs of doing in hot spots around New York. Already, we know the death toll is “only” 2,763 a day because quarantining slowed the acceleration of infections around the country, as it did earlier in Asia and parts of Europe.

Then we can concentrate on building a latter-day version of a post-war boom.In the meantime, Congress and the President can prime the pump to hold our modern Depression at bay. And maybe develop tests faster, and have two-hour daily press conferences less often.