Widespread shock as emails reveal Trump appointee's 'monstrous' call to spread COVID-19 in America

[UCmeNdc]

According to a new report from POLITICO, a former top Trump appointee urged for health officials to adopt a “herd immunity” approach to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing for millions of people to be infected.

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/jail-them-widespread-shock-as-emails-reveal-trump-appointees-monstrous-call-to-spread-19-in-america/

[Hortensis]

1. Hope so. I thought it was shocking when his admin pushed the

idea of going for herd immunity (with 1.5-3 million projected deaths) as we headed for the big second wave.

Shrugging at 2M deaths from this holocaust was monstrous all right, but so was blowing off the first 20,000 as nothing, just a cold, no worse than the annual flu. Monstrous!

[GopherGal]

9. And even that assumes there's a binary outcome

of either "death" or "no lasting effect".

With a novel disease we've no way of knowing that the survivors will have the same duration and/or quality of life they would have had if they had not been infected. As time has passed and we've had more experience of the disease, it seems more and more that there are long-term effects for some people. It's not "2 million dead, 300 million had a bit of a mild flu for a couple weeks then went back to normal" It's "2 million dead, untold millions with long term effects including heart, lung and/or kidney damage".

[Hortensis]

10. Yes! And the economic, emotional and social devastation

so many are suffering and may never fully recover from.

[GopherGal]

18. Ah, but they wouldn't be suffering from this economic devastation if we just fully opened up!

The disease is less harmful than the "cure" of quarantine/lockdown/social distancing measures, you see. And even though the disease is "novel" and we know little about it, we're sure enough of that to bet the health of millions of people (including our school children) on it.

[Progressive dog]

2. So Trump held his rallies to infect us

quicker. Trump thought he could kill the vulnerable quickly and run on the epedemic being over.

[Larissa]

21. College students: Lambs to the slaughter

From the Politico scoop:

"Paul Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that 'we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had . . . younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread."

[central scrutinizer]

3. That's what Sweden tried

https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-admits-coronavirus-strategy-underestimated-strenght-virus-lofven-stefan-2020-12

Now backtracking.

[Brainfodder]

4. Shock? Not me, was rather obvious.

Even had worse than worthless congress people spewing stupid shit like suggesting we go out to eat.

Mooo!

[lame54]

5. Herd Immunity is another term for...

Doing absolutely nothing

That's why the plan appealed to Trump

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. with covid, it is another word for murder

[Initech]

7. And people still want this monster as their president?

[stopdiggin]

8. considering where we're at now ...

and then add some (undefined) multiplier to the picture .....

Hey -- that's just -- great!
Making America Great Again
with dangerous ideologues.

[SunSeeker]

11. Mission Accomplished. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. "call"? It was & is the policy; thus "Open Up America". . . . nt

[monkeyman1]

13. more charges on the gop !!!

negligent homicide = 300,000 against the gop !! trump =Leavenworth

[rolypolychloe]

14. When is someone just going to come out and say it

At the behest of Putin, Trump and the complicit Republicans have launched a biological attack on the United States as devastating as any conventional war and way way cheaper. All they had to do was nothing.

[Locrian]

15. we've failied miserably....

COVID as horrible as it is and continues to be is stunning on how many deaths have needlessly happened.
It scares me to think what the implications of climate change, etc are with our current inability to deal with this.

[burrowowl]

16. Who is going to be left to

clean rich folks toilets, pick their food, deliver their goods, etc.

[Mr.Bill]

17. Herd immunity is a very bad idea

when you don't even know if having the virus gives immunity, and if so, for how long.

[GopherGal]

20. Herd immunity is a very *good* idea

if obtained via widespread administration of a verified safe, efficacious vaccine. (goodbye polio, small pox, measles, etc)

It's a very bad idea if the proposed means of reaching herd immunity is to expose a couple hundred million people to uncontrolled spread of a poorly understood disease which will kill at least 1% of them, may have as-yet-unknown long-term effects, and may or may not even confer any lasting immunity.

The Turd Reich's taking the good name of the approach used successfully to eliminate (or nearly so) some deadly diseases and applying it to their "let 'em all die for the stock market while we elites get our Walter Reed treatments" approach.

[MadLinguist]

23. this, 1000 times! Nobody EVER called exposure to infection 'herd immunity' before this disastrous

year of anti-scientists trying to fake like they know anything about anything. Heretofore, herd immunity meant the critical proportion of a population that had been vaccinated being able to insure against wide-spread infection. This other meaning is downright Orwellian, and I hate it.

[LittleGirl]

19. We've been watching this slow motion disaster

For Months over here in Europe!
We are watching in horror as nothing but sickness and death is being reported from the US.
The Wild West of “let them die.”

[Larissa]

22. 306,363 Americans gone

Trump: “I don't take responsibility at all.”