This is Going to be Bad Ep 03

Richard Crim
6 min readMar 26, 2020

Republican America responds to the crisis

Nurses with patient, Spanish Flu Pandemic 1918

I’m seeing a lot of, I guess, Trump supporters on here who are saying things like.

No one is 100% safe from this virus. Eventually all of us are going to be exposed to it. Our bodies will respond to this virus according to our bodies abilities. And a few of us will die.

Flattening the curve may be a good idea to save a few lives, but I don’t think 75% of the economy can be shut in for a year”

They seem to be moving from the position of, “This is all a hoax to make Trump look bad”.

To “Let’s all get the virus and get it over with”.

Arguing that, “A few of us will die but our economy isn’t built to be shut down, so lets go back to work”.

In the face of certain recession and possible depression this may seem like making the “hard choice”. Sacrificing lives to save the economy.

It’s the kind of hard choice that Republican voters apparently trust Trump to make for them. His approval ratings have actually gone up this week.

But, before we go down this road and declare the country “back to normal” for Easter Sunday. So that Trump can stand in the National Cathedral and thank God for delivering us.

Let’s think about what a “few lives” really means.

Here’s how you should think about how many of us are going to die.

Take the number of everyone who died, in every war the US has ever fought (Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Invasion of Iraq, Invasion of Afghanistan, etc.). Then add all the people who died in this country from the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918.

Then you will be close to the number of people who could die.

Except that they would all die in the next two years. That’s how many people they are talking about when they say, “a few will die”.

Because there is no vaccine, and won’t be one for 18–24 months.

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Richard Crim

My entire life can be described in one sentence: Things didn’t go as planned, and I’m OK with that.