The Cincinnati Enquirer is received an angry backlash from some of its readers this week when it published an editorial advising parents to give their children the coronavirus.
The editorial in question was written by Jack Rubinstein, a physician-scientist at the University of Cincinnati, and it argued that Ohio’s current state lockdown is not sustainable and will lead to civic unrest if it continues for much longer.
As an alternative, Rubinstein proposes creating “planned, orderly waves of disease” by infecting young people for whom the disease poses minimal risks.
He acknowledges this is less than ideal, but he also says that there’s little likelihood of the government successfully implementing a nationwide test-and-trace plan similar to the ones that have helped keep fatalities low in South Korea and Germany.
“This plan will likely increase the number of people with some degree of immunity and will take advantage of our well-prepared health care system to treat the relatively rare cases where they require hospitalization,” he concludes. “If this is done carefully and by relying closely on the medical infrastructure data, other sectors of the population could potentially be opened in stages in order to create small, manageable waves of disease and show the rest of the country once again how Ohio deals with crises.”
Rubinstein’s editorial did not go over well with many readers, however. Check out some angry reactions below.