By David Futrelle
People often ask “who funds The Federalist,” assuming that the answer is some shadowy right-wing billionaire who finds the site’s crackpot conservatism congenial. But I think I’ve found the actual answer: it’s the coronavirus. Yes, that’s right: the coronavirus is funding The Federalist.
I was led to this conclusion by a pair of articles that went up on the site today arguing, quite seriously, that hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of coronavirus deaths might be a fair price to pay for an early end to the not-quite-national shutdown that has millions of Americans now “sheltering in place” to help control the virus’ spread.
If you think I’m exaggerating or engaging in rhetorical overkill, nope. I’m basically just paraphrasing. In an article posted on The Federalist today, Hillsdale College grad student Jonathan Ashbach writes
It seems harsh to ask whether the nation might be better off letting a few hundred thousand people die. … Yet honestly facing reality is not callous, and refusing even to consider whether the present response constitutes an even greater evil than the one it intends to mitigate would be cowardly.
In addition to the economic costs of the shutdown, and what he sees as a fundamental loss of freedom, Ashbach worries that all this social distancing is making our lives a lot less fun.
“[C]onsider the massive sacrifice of life Americans are making in their social distancing campaign,” he writes.
True, nearly all are not literally dying, but they are giving up a good deal of what makes life worth living — work, classes, travel, hugs, time with friends, conferences, quiet nights out, and so forth. Probably almost everyone would be willing to live a somewhat shorter normal life rather than a somewhat longer life under current conditions. The abandonment of normalcy, therefore, is in many ways equivalent to shortening the lives of the entire nation.
He’s rather have hugs and death than a temporary loss of hugs. One wonders if his blithe acceptance of the possibility of mass death may have something to do with the fact that as a grad student (presumably in his twenties or early 30s) he is much less likely to be one of the dead than, for example, those over the age of 70.
When it comes to Federalist executive editor and self-described “happy wife” Joy Pullman, one does not have to wonder: she plainly acknowledges that she’s unlikely to die if the current state lockdowns are brought to an early end. But when it comes to the country as a whole, she’d prefer mass death to massive deficits.
“My point here is not that I like people dying,” she wrote.
It’s that very often our society chooses to allow deaths because the alternative is worse. I’m suggesting the severe social and economic tradeoffs of unlimited quarantine are an important consideration that is not being taken seriously enough. …
The costs Americans are being forced to bear may be more than is rational to impose.
She’s well aware that the cost of abandoning the current lockdowns could be utterly devastating; indeed, she begins her article citing a report predicting that without social distancing the deaths in the US alone from cornonavirus could reach 4 million, two million more than the deaths that could result if we stay locked down. Naturally, she prefers the considerably more optimistic takes on the subject that have come from others on the political right, but she knows that serious researchers think the cost in lives could run into the millions.
Nonetheless, she suggested in one of the article’s subheads that “a depression will ruin 330 million lives, not 4 million.” She worries that cash payments from the government to ordinary Americans will “[addict] millions to welfare … transform[ing them] from workers to takers,” while “many” others will “die due to poverty, lack of medical care, and despair.”
Huh. That last bit sounds like a plug for socialized medicine and a stronger welfare state, but of course to Pullman the very idea is anathema.
In the end, she decides that she’d rather risk coronavirus than a massive economic slump. I mean, why should she and others like her suffer economically when they’re not even part of the group of people most likely to die from the disease?
Why would the entire nation grind to a halt when the entire nation is not at a severe risk? I would rather have a flu I am 99.8 percent likely to survive than the nation plunged into chaos indefinitely because we pulled the plug on our economy during a stampede.
In other words: I’ve got my health, fuck the rest of you.
It would be one thing if this thinking was confined to the fringes of the crackpot right. But it’s not just Federalist writers who see the disease this way. Indeed, Donald Trump himself seems to be suggesting in one recent tweet that he’s getting pretty annoyed with the effect all this social distancing is having on the stock market, and that he might be considering a more laissez faire approach.
At the daily coronovirus briefing today, Trump went further. ”
“America will again and soon be open for business — very soon,” he said. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
The Federalist is providing Trump with handy talking points for whatever terrible policy — or non-policy — he decides to enact when the 15 days are over on March 30. Depending on what he does or does not do,4 million deaths may turn out to be too optimistic a projection.
H/T — Dr. Nerdlove, who drew my attention to these articles
UPDATE: Story updated with quote from the coronavirus briefing.
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I’m not so sure. Although this might be very Brit-centric.
It was really hard here to stop people smoking, even when cancer was a leading cause of death. I know there’s the addiction aspect; but it took decades worth of social pressure before there was a mass take-up to even try to give up.
I think it will be the same with the virus. People will weigh (inaccurately probably) the risks against the pressure to return; whether that be for financial reasons or just a longing to get back to ‘normal’.
And whilst they may have first hand knowledge of some deaths and illnesses, they’ll also be aware that most people are hardly affected if at all; and they’ll assume they’re like ‘most’ people.
Some people are affected by catastrophic thinking; but I suspect most people (certainly here it seems) tend to assume either it won’t happen to them or that when your number’s up there’s nothing you can do about it. I was in London in the middle of the last terrorist attack and people were literally stood at the cordon waiting for the police to say it was ok to go back into the pubs. I suspect it’ll be a similar attitude to the virus especially as lockdown fatigue kicks in.
Although like I say, that’s just the perspective from here; the US may well be different.
@Alan
Can’t see why.
Have these people not considered the economic consequences of millions of deaths? It is the same thing with healthcare and taxation. If you were to increase healthcare availability and decrease taxation for individuals you’d have significant economic benefits,including for the big business and rich individuals who might face higher taxes.
If the tradeoff was “quarantine self or 5% odds of dying”, I probably would at least think about it. It’s probably how the writers are rationalizing their opinions to themselves if they are not aware of being monsters.
Turn out it’s “quarantine self or kill a bunch of random people you may or may not know, and also make the life of the various doctors, nurses, and janitor even more an hell that it is”. So in my opinion, there’s little choice. Even outside of the moral aspect, I pretty much would want other to take slightly painful hits to their quality of life if it improved mine massively, so out of consistency if nothing else, I will try to do my part to improve the life of others.
(same reasoning apply to taxations, as well as, you know, pretty much any situation of “not be a huge asshole”)
And now Gilead Sciences has orphan drug status for their drug which might treat coronavirus, so they are the only company that will be making it so most people won’t be able to get it. This is what corruption gets you.
Talk about perverse incentives.
Maybe, just maybe, drug discovery is a public good that should be performed by the public sector like, and for the same reason as, the fire department?
I was actually talking to my financial advisor a couple of weeks ago, just before things started seriously shutting down. Needless to say, the virus and the markets were both subjects of conversation, as this was just after the Dow had nose-dived on virus fears. She was encouraging caution and no panicked reactions, and my comment was pretty much, “I’m not going to withdraw money now, because the market will probably recover. And if it doesn’t, we all have bigger problems to worry about.”
Turned out that my financial advisor did have bigger and more personal problems to worry about. She had been preparing to get married in a couple of months. Well, that’s looking less likely right now, and a non-trivial amount of money and setup have already been done. And worse… a significant chunk of the family visitors for the wedding would have been coming from Iran. That’s definitely not happening all that soon.
Meanwhile, in Ontario, some businesses can:
Translation: Ford is using the virus as cover to gut unions and labor protections by allowing businesses to hire scabs.
Lovely.
Someone please let me know when he tests positive, so I can throw a little celebration?
“very often our society chooses to allow deaths because the alternative is worse”
So much for erring on the side of human life.
Some commentary on Trump’s ‘open for business’ idea
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/24/trump-coronavirus-economy-america-business
Executive summary:
Experts say it won’t work; for the reasons already alluded to here.
I mean, if we’re gonna go ahead and start killing people for the sake of the economy, everyone who writes for the federalist should be going first. And I don’t mean getting sick on purpose, then they might risk infecting someone that matters. Making half the workforce sick with pneumonia and clogging hospitals would destroy the economy. No one who writes conservative internet rants for a living produces anything of value. They’re just mouths to feed. They should each voluntarily hop into a volcano. For the economy.
Candace Owens has some thoughts: https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1242512626594320384?s=19
Hold on — Candace Owens has developed the capacity to think? When did that happen, and why wasn’t I notified? 🙂
On examination of the tweet, it looks like this may have been a false alarm. I’m not detecting any evidence of intelligent thought there.
On the other hand I can’t understand why that tweet hasn’t been ratioed so hard that it registered on the Richter scale … and what is with that one from Kirstie Alley that seems to consist of sincere praise for Donald Trump’s decorum, of all the absurdities?
@kupo
For some reason, I feel like a woman born in 1989 is not the best representative of the elderly.
Is anyone else reminded of the quote from Braveheart: “They can take our lives, but they can’t take our freedom?”
Anyway, I’m beginning to think that conservatives just don’t understand the concept of time. It explains why Trump can change his story and everyone will believe it was always that way, or why they are acting like the quarantine is forever.
@Surplus
The tweet hasn’t been ratioed because it exists in a conservative echo chamber, where they all approvingly love the tweet so it’s harder to ratio. Most people who aren’t fascists don’t bother engaging because it’s just not worth the time.
I’m not totally sure who Candace Owens is, but I take it she’s not an historian; otherwise she might have heard of conscription and command economies.
And of course this little stain on the nation’s character.
@Alan Robertshaw
She’s an alt right grifter and a shield for racists and misogynists to use when people point out their bigotry. She is most certainly not a historian, as she thinks slavery was a choice and that racism ended in the 1960s.
A few thoughts:
One practical thing (since morality is obviously irrelevent to them) that the monsters dismissing a percentage of the population dying are ignoring is that we wouldn’t simply be “losing” those people. the dead will not be dusted by The Snapture as in Infinity War. They will be dying after expensive and labor-intensive sickness, leaving expensive and labor-intensive corpses. That alone is an economic disaster.
Predictably, some right-wingers have gone further than “some people will die,” to “the people who will die ought to die.” Tweets going around like “the 2% who will die a 1) expensive to maintain and 2) not productive.”
They’re talking about me. Every time I told my ex-therapist that many conservatives wanted people like me to die, she insisted that nobody thinks people like me should die, they’re “just trying to reduce spending and don’t think about the results” and the like.
Well, now they’re coming right out and saying it. It’s not just “eliminate Medicare,” it’s “if they die that’s an economic benefit!”
@Allandrel
Out of curiosity, did you ever file a complaint against her like you mentioned?
Allandrel: to be fair, if the ghouls have their way (and they pretty much have already), a lot of deaths will be very inexpensive. Many people will die at home, silently unable even to get to the hospital. It’s happened in Spain and in Italy.
Or, they’ll die lying on the floor in the hospital, with no available health care.
A surgeon friend of mine is reading up ethics guidance in preparation for when the wave gets to his hospital. He doesn’t want to just wing it when deciding who lives and who dies.
That rumbling you just felt was me facepalming hard enough to register on the Richter scale.
Even if you disregard the utter immorality of allowing 1-2% of the population to die, do these dunces realize that people won’t just either be completely fine and able to work, or immediately dead. Millions of people will be sick at home or in hospital, which will cause society to collapse. Who will produce our food? Who will process it? Transport it to supermarkets? Sell it to us? Who will collect the garbage? Drive buses? Who will operate the power plants? Let’s not even think about hospital staff. If everyone else stays home, essential workers can somewhat safely provide what’s needed. Without quarantine, supply chains will completely break down.
I vaguely remember the “government death panels” scaremongering from early Obama era. The rhetorical point of that seemed to be to a) insinuate that having publicly subsidized healthcare would somehow prevent people from buying premium quality healthcare, forcing the aspiring millionaires to rely on mere basic healthcare, and b) emphasize the involvement of”government”, which is presumed to make everything inefficient, low quality for high cost.
If anything, premium healthcare access would presumably include being able to access healthcare when demand far outstrips supply. If this isn’t happening, I expect the rightwing pundits will present some harrowing family tragedies, blaming them on Obamacare (inasmuch as that still exists) and general socialist attitudes of medical establishment.
It is. Virtually all the important novel molecular entities are discovered by public research but they are subsequently exploited by the pharmacos. Doesn’t have to be but it is.
I’m pretty sure none of those people can show actual numbers on how “productive” a person needs to be to outweigh their “expenses”. Not that the whole idea isn’t monstrous in the first place, but do they not realise there are young, working people with medications that put them at risk with COVID-19 even though they are generally healthy?
I hate the idea of policing people’s worthiness based on their life choices exactly because people who advocate for it will be throwing you under the bus even if you’ve been taking good care of yourself and staying healthy to live a good life despite your preexisting condition.
Meanwhile I just read an online comment complaining about how the Finnish health officials don’t realise we’re headed towards a depression(!) and just talk about making this whole virus thing take as long as possible. Because our first three reported deaths due to the virus have not occurred in the space of a single week and flattening the curve is something something now.