Fox's Brit Hume says it’s an “entirely reasonable viewpoint” to expect that grandparents would be willing to die to protect the economy
Hume: “We don’t shut down the economy to save every single life that’s threatened by a wide-spread disease. We just don’t”
Published
Citation From the March 24, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
BRIT HUME: Well, I think he's essentially saying something that's not terribly different from what the president and Governor Cuomo have been saying. Which is that this, what we're living in now, this circumstance as we try to beat this virus, is not sustainable. That the utter collapse of the country's economy, which many think will happen if this goes on much longer, is an intolerable result. And that, he is saying, for his own part, that he'd be willing to take a risk of getting the disease if that's what it took to allow the economy to move forward. And he said that because he's late in life, you know, that he would be perhaps more willing then he might've been and a younger age. Which seems to me to be an entirely reasonable viewpoint.
Now, I guess a lot of people think that, you know, as your previous guest just suggested, that, you know, any kind of risk with anybody's life is intolerable. And I think, you know, we live with the risk of, you know, seasonal influenza every year and thousands upon thousands die from it. But we do not, as has been pointed out, shut down the economy to combat it. Now look, the mortality rate from this is higher enough that it makes it alarming. So it's obviously a much more, a special kind of case. But there we are. You know, we don't shut down the economy to save every single life that's threatened by a wide-spread disease. We just don't.