By Marc W. Polite
Good evening, everyone. The above picture is of The Architect- a character from The Matrix Reloaded. In a pivotal scene where he describes a horrific choice that Neo is forced to make. When Neo responds that the machines need man to survive.. The Architect says the line .. “There are levels of survival that we are prepared to accept”
As the clamoring for reopening the country from the coronavirus related lockdown gets louder and louder, this part of the movie comes to mind. Political figures are making eerily similar, cold calculations about the human costs of reopening the economy with the virus nowhere near under control.
Senator Rand Paul is willing to sacrifice children by reopening schools, extolling the needs of the economy over human life.
As Dr. Fauci warned today in a hearing with the Senate, reopening the economy too soon will lead to “needless suffering and death.” Somehow, this warning is being questioned, as those who are in power are more concerned with financial matters.
An open question to any of the reopen faction and those who agree. Exactly, what kind of economy do you think we’re going to reopen to? 33 million people have lost their jobs, and that’s just in the last 7 weeks. Do some of you think that every one is going to be just raring to go and do everything they were doing from before, even with precautions in place? Who, that is really exercising critical thinking is going to just run right back to the movies, the restaurants, the barber, the gym, among all the other places people have not been in almost two months?
Let me get this straight: the coronavirus has resulted in over 80,000 deaths, and there is no vaccine.. yet it’s supposed to be a-ok to start everything back up. The response of the country was all haphazard and late, yet some believe opening up early will yield no problem at all. There’s no magic wand here. We’re just in it.
What is grisly about this predicament, is that our political leaders are so willing to just open up and see what happens, facts on the ground be damned. For the survival of the economy, there are levels of human suffering and death that they are prepared to accept. How reassuring.