There are no moral absolutes or easy answers in a pandemic, or after it’s over
“Hey, Trump supporters: He’d rather endanger your health than lose an election” (Salon, Feb. 27)
“To those who are concerned about coronavirus, Trump doesn’t care” (Boston Globe, March 24)
“Tell us, Mr. President, just how many coronavirus deaths are worth it to save the economy?” (Los Angeles Times, March 24)
To hear some pundits tell it, President Trump will happily sacrifice hundreds of thousands of American lives in order to rescue the economy and win a second term.
This is nonsense on wheels. In what universe does a politician ride a wave of mass death to reelection? Stalin and Mao avoided the wrath of voters only because there weren’t any.
Media folks have never forgiven Trump for making fools of them in 2016. After helping bring their worst nightmare to life with $5 billion in free publicity, they’ve spent 41 months screaming that the reality TV star who took them for a ride is, among other things, a moron. No extra charge for the irony.
To be fair, few modern leaders compare with Trump for willful ignorance. The president wears his blinders like a crown. He boasts of gut instincts that serve him better than the advice of experts. But even he isn’t foolish enough to think he’ll find a pot of political gold at the end of a trail of corpses.
In Trump’s mind, the experts are overestimating the potential impact of COVID-19. He’s probably wrong, but the rest of us needn’t react as if he’s fingering the nuclear trigger. His “deadline” has already moved from the end of March to mid-April. We’ll know much more about this pandemic by then, and so will he.
If Trump does sound the all-clear too soon, we have another backstop: the governors and mayors who will actually decide when to lift the restrictions they themselves imposed. Nothing binds them to the president’s wishes. Liberals who decry federalism as it applies to gun laws, environmental rules or the Electoral College will have a new reason to admire decentralization.
What of the “lives vs. livelihood” debate sparked by the president? Two things to keep in mind: they’re not separate issues and the moral implications are not black and white.
We’ve heard a lot in recent years about “deaths of despair” linked to economic displacement. It isn’t hard to imagine where the coronavirus recession – a foregone conclusion – takes us if it becomes another Great Depression. The destruction of America’s middle class will exact an unprecedented toll on both livelihoods and life.
The path forward will disappoint moral absolutists. No, we won’t open up workplaces and public spaces tomorrow. But neither will we huddle in our homes with Netflix and Purell until the virus is eliminated, any more than we’ll roll up the sidewalks when the next flu season starts or lower the speed limit on interstate highways to 25.
Americans tolerate risk every day in order to enjoy the fruits of modernity. We would do well to remember that the people who came before us tolerated much greater risks while living lives we would consider nasty, brutish and short. When the first fatal auto accident occurred in 1898, global life expectancy was less than half of what it is today.
We’ll decide how much risk to accept from this pandemic in the same gray area where so much of life happens. Be grateful that the decision won’t fall to one man. Be grateful that Kentucky got a new governor before we got the virus. And when you can’t go another day without a gallon of milk or a fresh vegetable, be careful out there.
Michael Smith is a freelance opinion writer in Georgetown, Kentucky.