Life in the Time of Coronavirus: Et tu, Glenn?

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Unbelievable.

In the same week that Texas' Republican lieutenant governor Dan Patrick suggested that grandparents should sacrifice their lives in order to save the country and President Donald Trump rosily predicted that the war on the novel coronavirus will probably end in time for Easter, Glenn Beck piled on with his own idiocy.

According to the Huffington Post and Media Matters, the popular right-wing commentator and author apparently shares Patrick's apocalyptic vision of older Americans going out to the workplace while their children and grandchildren stay at home, even though the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have determined that COVID-19 is more likely to kill older people who become infected.

Per Huffington Post's story:

“I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working,” he said in comments posted online by Media Matters. “Even if we all get sick, I’d rather die than kill the country.” 
Beck’s comments came after he said he was concerned that Democrats would “jam down” the Green New Deal in economic stimulus legislation while Americans are home “panicked” over COVID-19.

In short, not only is Beck claiming that the Democrats are sneaking in parts of the "Green New Deal" into the COVID-19 stimulus package, he's also (once again) saying that older Americans are, in essence, expendable. In 2010, Beck claimed that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) would set up "death panels" to decide who got medical treatment and who did not and that if that was the case, he preferred that seniors should just die off naturally rather than submit to the whims of the ACA death panels.


I would rather have nature off grandma, you know?” he said in 2010. “I’d rather, I’d rather have the free market off grandma because then nobody is controlling it.”
My reply, as a 57-year-old writer and American citizen, is:

"By all means, Glenn. You go first, though. And take Dan Patrick with you."

Source: Huffington Post, 'I'd Rather Die': Glenn Beck Urges Older Americans to Work Despite Coronavirus by Ed Mazza; March 25, 2020

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