Even the mouthpiece of the progressive movement (CNN) is waking up to a reality that was always glaringly obvious.
In this story CNN reports on a new UN report:
The world is facing multiple famines of “biblical proportions” in just a matter of months, the UN has said, warning that the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation . . .
“While dealing with a Covid-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic,” David Beasley told the UN’s security council. “There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself.” . . .
When added to the 821 million people already chronically hungry, that scenario would push more than 1 billion people into dire situations. . . .
“These countries may face an excruciating trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from the coronavirus to have them die from hunger,” the report said. . . . we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.
For weeks we have been listening to the “let’s lock everyone down for 18 months crowd.” And when anyone pushes back they have responded with a smug air of moral superiority that they are on the side of life and anyone who disagrees with them is just a money-grubbing bastard.
As I have said before, the response to the virus has never been a discrete choice between saving lives and saving the economy. Burning the world’s economy has a price in lives. Now even the most liberal of liberals are starting to wake up to the fact that the choice has never been so simple. Lives will be lost no matter what we do. The terrible choice we must make is between which policy decision will result in the fewest lives lost.
And if even 20% of those additional 130 million people pushed to the brink of starvation actually go over the brink, the death toll would be 26 million, far more than even the most dire estimates of deaths from the virus.