CNBC host Rick Santelli suggests killing millions now, because coronavirus is bad for business

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/6/1924947/-CNBC-host-Rick-Santelli-suggests-killing-millions-now-because-coronavirus-is-bad-for-business

CNBC host Rick Santelli suggests killing millions now, because coronavirus is bad for business
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Friday March 06, 2020 · 9:19 AM EST


Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is alone in valuing stock market numbers over human lives has never watched either Fox News or any network whose name includes the word “business.” The whole business of business channels is finding ways to add another billion to billion-dollar portfolios by improving “productivity”—or, as it’s known to everyone else, getting more work out of people while paying them less.

But even by the feudal standards of CNBC, this moment from host Rick Santelli is a horrifying example of literally choosing to sacrifice people in order to make things more convenient for the world’s CEOs. About the coronavirus, Santelli said, “Maybe we'd be just better off if we gave it to everybody, and then in a month it would be over because the mortality rate of this probably isn't going to be any different if we did it that way than the long-term picture, but the difference is we're wreaking havoc on global and domestic economies."

See, trying to prevent coronavirus from becoming an unrestrained epidemic costs money. Also time. There are all those cancelled conferences. Declining airline revenues. Deals that can’t be dealt.

During his bid to get slotted in between Dracula and The Creature in the pantheon of notable monsters, Santelli repeatedly compares the coronavirus to “the generic-type flu,” even as he concedes that it’s not the generic-type flu. But hey, if it were, we’d only be killing somewhere between 12,000 and 60,000 Americans to get those business wheels back to spinning at full speed. Barely a road bump.

Of course, no one has any immunity to the novel coronavirus, and there is no vaccine. So even if it has the same fatality rate as the flu, the number of deaths would be more like 320,000 … but still, have you seen Delta’s stock? Measures must be taken.

And then there’s the fact that so far the case fatality rate of coronavirus isn’t 0.1% like that of generic flu. It’s 3.4%. So … 10 million Americans? Is that still something Santelli would rush to embrace in order to get everyone back to work and boost that market up, up, up? Honestly, it’s best not to ask.

Link to tweet

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Is he volunteering? Let's start with him.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. Time to organize a boycott

starting with CNBC's most lucrative advertising accounts?

[Just_Vote_Dem]

3. IMO, that's typical Repub thinking-they want to kill us off

Deny child care, deny food stamps, deny health care, deny SS and Medicare-I think these sociopaths really enjoy this

[Chainfire]

8. There may be more than you think

That would be happy with a faster approach to get rid of liberals than starving or dying from a disease. They would be willing to get rid of us out of "patriotism", "doing God's will" and "making America Great Again." They are much like the SS troops who wore belt buckles proclaiming, "Gott Mit Uns."

[SWBTATTReg]

4. This is beyond despicable and there should be no accepting any apologies from this guy and...

the network should fire him immediately.

So you are going to volunteer all of your family, including the elderly ones, your friends, neighbors, everyone, to get sick willingly, on your supposed solution? I'd think that from a logical perspective, this would be the last thing that anyone would want, for it gives the CV more hosts to further mutate, and perhaps mutate into a far worse virus.

Nothing like judge, jury, executioner all in one, eh?

Nothing like plain ol' fashioned greed. I can imagine sometime in the future, people won't be crying over your gravesite. I don't think you earned it.

[klook]

5. Reminder: Santelli is the jerk who was a frontman for the Koch-funded AstroTurf "Tea Party" campaign

From The Guardian, Oct. 2010:
The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires

The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.

An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of".
(snip)
In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine: "I've never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me." But a fascinating new film – (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham – tells a fuller story. Oldham infiltrated some of the movement's key organising events, including the 2009 Defending the American Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. "Five years ago," he explains, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation."
(snip)
The movement began when CNBC's Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a bankers' revolt against the undeserving poor. (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama's plan to "subsidise the losers": by which he meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears.) On the same day, Americans for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events.

Oldham's film shows how AFP crafted the movement's messages and drafted its talking points.

Much more at link:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[Roland99]

6. Yeah. He's a hero to the libertarian asshats for this rant

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213048400#post22

[PA Democrat]

7. Slowing the spread on the virus will lower the overall death rate,

and allow more time for the development of drugs to treat the coronavirus and the development of a vaccine.

Furthermore, if there is a mass infection,our healthcare system will be unable to provide lifesaving treatment for people who may otherwise have recovered.

Santelli is an idiot.

[MerryBlooms]

9. heinous feucer.

[Javaman]

10. right out of the milton freidman book of disaster capitalism. nt