The headline in a June 22 Politico dispatch read as follows: ‘THE U.S. HAS HAMSTRUNG ITSELF’: HOW AMERICA BECAME THE NEW ITALY ON CORONA VIRUS. And the subhead: “While Trump touted America’s reopening and watched infections climb, European leaders maintained struct rules and drove cases down.”

Another Politico article on the same date stated: ‘GOVERNMENT ITSELF CAN’T SOLVE THIS PROBLEM’: FLORIDA OFFICIALS ALARMED AS VIRUS RAGES.

And in the June 22 editions of the Wall Street Journal: AS CORONAVIRUS CASES RISE IN ARIZONA, NEW MASK RULES SPARK A FIGHT: ‘Under pressure from health experts, governor allows local authorities to mandate the use of masks, sparking relief from some and rage in others.”

In the WSJ story, the enraged “others” were patrons of the Buffalo Chip Saloon and Steakhouse in Cave Creek, Arizona, a bar I have been in. It features Friday night bull riding on a mechanical bull, a big attraction for wanna-be cowboys, most of whom are Phoenix suburbanites.

From The Hill: At his disappointing campaign rally in Tulsa, President Trump said that he’d asked his  advisors to slack off on testing because that only increased the number of confirmed cases. His press secretary later walked that back, stating that he’d made the remark in jest. But then Trump partially walked back the walk back, telling The Hill ‘I don’t kid” (a good thing — if that directing his staff to slow down testing was his idea of a joke, he will have no chance of a post-election career as a standup comic. Should he lose, that is).

All of this had inspired your correspondent to draft…

A MODEST PROPOSAL

To state it succinctly, considerable advantages will accrue to American society by abandoning all attempts to mitigate or suppress the Corona Virus, aka COVID19 and allow the disease to sweep the nation unchecked. Face masks, surgical gloves, social distancing, testing and contact tracing will be prohibited; all shops, stores, stadiums, gyms, churches, synagogues, mosques, movie theaters, bars and restaurants, etc., etc. will be permitted to reopen at full capacity. This will inevitably lead to a rise in infections and deaths to make the current upticks look minor by comparison. About 600 Americans are dying a day under present conditions (some estimates go as high as 800). The let-her-rip policy I’m recommending could conceivably double those numbers, resulting in anywhere between 216,000 and 288,000 additional deaths by year’s end. That would bring the total, factoring in the 120,000+ who have already died, to a low of 336,000 and a high of 408,000. Assuming no vaccine is developed, the corpses will accumulate well into, and possibly beyond, January 1st, 2021. A grim prospect, yes, but we Americans are optimists, and I’m here to present the silver lining in the cloud.

1. As you have probably read, people in my age group are the most susceptible. Somewhere around forty percent of the deaths recorded so far have occurred in nursing homes. Allowing the virus to spread unrestricted would accelerate the reduction of the country’s aged population, in or out of extended care facilities. Under ideal circumstances, it would wipe them out entirely. But we must deal with reality, not the ideal. Consider the savings that would result — the Social Security system would be returned to solvency, ditto for Medicare and Medicaid. I know I am willing to die to relieve taxpayers. Aren’t you? In a similar vein, a great many deaths, regardless of the person’s age, are suffered by people with pre-existing health problems such as diabetes, obesity, respiratory and heart ailments. Culling these individuals will also realize considerable savings in health care costs. All others, the survivors, will have developed herd immunity, giving the U.S. a younger, healthier, and more vigorous population.

2. People of color in general, African Americans in particular, are dying at far higher rates than whites. Giving Covid19 free rein should eliminate many POCs, which would go a long way toward toward relaxing today’s racial tensions. With significantly fewer black and brown people in the country, Caucasians will have less cause to worry about becoming a minority by mid-century. Their confidence restored, they will be that much more unlikely to be attracted to white supremacist movements. And there will be a reduction in police shootings of African Americans; with an invisible virus felling blacks by the score, the cops will no longer have a reason to kill them. Finally, consider that almost all employees of meat-packing houses, vegetable growers, and chicken-processing plants are immigrants, the majority illegal. Shrinking their numbers would boost job openings for American citizens (provided they’re willing to work for low wages with few benefits), and help solve the immigration crisis.

The above is just a broad outline for dealing with the pandemic in the near future. I will humbly leave working out the details and implementation to the White House and its allies in the House and Senate, and in state governments.