CNN/Politics is reporting on the faux-wisdom of Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN):
An Indiana congressman said Tuesday that letting more Americans die from the novel coronavirus is the “lesser of two evils” compared with the economy cratering due to social distancing measures.
Speaking with radio station WIBC in Indiana, Republican Rep. Trey Hollingsworth asserted that, while he appreciated the science behind the virus’ spread, “it is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.”
“The social scientists are telling us about the economic disaster that is going on. Our (Gross Domestic Product) is supposed to be down 20% alone this quarter,” Hollingsworth said. “It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office.”
Sophisticated analysis? No. It’s one of those fallacious appeals to authority via the Big boy and big girl pants remark – that is, the grownups are now going to make a hard decision and you lesser beings had better let the grownups do that for your own good. That’s the implicit message here.
There’s no particularly insightful argument. He makes an assertion, without support, that minimizing deaths through social distancing and flattening the curve, will cause more economic damage than having more people – by an order of at least one magnitude, if not, horrifyingly, two – die in agony.
And wear out the medical profession.
While many other non-COVID-19 patients who would ordinarily be saved would also die due to the well-documented scarcity of medical resources that his suggestion would entail.
Of course, this is not entirely surprising from a representative who has an MBA from Wharton and founded and ran a couple of companies – but never studied government. His values are those of the private sector, not the public sector.
And he may not have actually done any research, but just shot his mouth off. While I have no opinion on the validity of this work, as this is just a newspaper report, the University of Wyoming has been doing some research:
A University of Wyoming analysis found that social distancing efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus outweigh the economic costs of such measures by trillions of dollars, while also saving more than a million lives.
The researchers, led by a UW economist, found “that social distancing policies likely do not constitute an overreaction to COVID-19. In a variety of plausible scenarios based on the best available information as of April 3, 2020, we find that the economic benefits of lives saved outweigh the value of the projected losses of GDP by about $5.2 trillion,” the authors wrote in article that will be published by a Cambridge University journal.
The analysis comes amid a national debate about the impacts of social distancing and whether its benefits are worth the economic implications. Last month, President Donald Trump tweeted that the “cure” — social distancing and shutdowns of many businesses and states — “cannot … be worse than the problem itself.” In Wyoming, some officials — like Gillette Republican Rep. Scott Clem — have urged Gov. Mark Gordon to loosen up restrictions on the economy, simultaneously minimizing the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. (In a Facebook post Monday, Clem compared Cheyenne to the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler because the city was considering fining people for violating public health orders.) [Missoulian]
It’s an interesting article and worth a quick look. And I think it leaves Hollingsworth sucking air.
