Ron Johnson: What's A Little Coronavirus Between Friends?

Great job, Wisconsin!

We will never forgive Russ Feingold. Because if Feingold had run a halfway decent campaign to get his seat back in 2016, we wouldn't be stuck with Ron Johnson, the stupidest sumbitch in the Senate this side of James Inhofe. It's not easy making Marco Rubio look cogent by comparison, but Johnson carries it off with gusto. So, thanks for nothing, Russ!

Johnson's latest dispatch from Dumbfuckistan was delivered in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , where the senator attempted to reassure his Wisconsin constituents that the coronavirus pandemic is really NO BIG DEAL.

"I'm not denying what a nasty disease COVID-19 can be, and how it's obviously devastating to somewhere between 1 and 3.4 percent of the population," Johnson told reporter Craig Gilbert.

"But that means 97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this. But we don't shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It's a risk we accept so we can move about. We don't shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu," Johnson said, out loud, on purpose, and not obviously under the influence of heavy narcotics.

If "somewhere between 1 and 3.4 percent of the population" is killed by this virus, we're looking at between 3 and 11 million deaths. Which is really not the same as 38,000 people being killed in traffic accidents annually. Nor is it the same as the "common flu," which killed 61,000 people last year in America. FFS, in Italy, 475 people died   yesterday from this virus. The Italian healthcare system, which has more doctors and hospitals per capita than ours, is on the brink of collapse . This thing hasn't even begun to really hit hospitals, and the CDC is already telling doctors and nurses to use bandannas as makeshift face masks since we already ran out of them. This is not a fucking joke!

Now, to be fair, Johnson was not advocating ignoring public health officials who urge Americans to slow the virus's spread by staying home. As he told the reporter, "I'm saying, 'follow the guidelines' ... I'm not being critical of the governors that are closing things down." But he made it entirely clear that his primary concern wasn't the death toll, but rather the effects on the economy.

"We need hospitals to operate. We need grocery stores. We need distribution. We need manufacturers. We need, obviously, the people that manufacture drugs," Johnson said. "We need our economy to continue to function. We can't all just shut ourselves and stay home. The economy has to move forward. And again, a rational reaction to this would recognize the fact that the vast majority of people that get coronavirus will survive without much worse symptoms than a cold or a normal flu."

Riiiiiiiiight.

If Johnson's remarks were an attempt to clean up his earlier statements to the New York Times , where the senator tried to showcase the bright side of pandemics, they utterly failed.

"One thing the press has not covered at all is the people who have really recovered," Johnson said last week. "Right now all people are hearing about are the deaths. I'm sure the deaths are horrific, but the flip side of this is the vast majority of people who get coronavirus do survive."

Ugh, why is the lamestream media such a Debbie Downer about pandemics? Every cloud has a silver lining, right? For instance, 43,000 British civilians were killed and another 139,000 were wounded in the Blitz when Germany bombed England in WWII. More than a million houses were destroyed. But after that, Britain got the National Healthcare Service in 1948. Because you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right Ron?

AHEM.

[ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / NYT ]

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