This kind of exchange is exactly why we can’t have a civil conversation about our policy response to COVID-19

‘Here’s what we have to do. We’re not going to control the pandemic, we are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations,’ Meadows said in his interview on ‘State of the Union.’

‘Why aren’t we going to get control of the pandemic?’ Tapper asked.

‘Because it is a contagious virus, just like the flu,’ Meadows reasoned.

‘Yeah, but why not make efforts to contain it?’ the CNN host pushed.

Meadows assured, ‘Well we are making efforts to contain it.’

[…]

‘Jake, we can get into the back and forth. Let me just say this – is what we need to do is make sure we have the proper mitigation factors, whether it’s therapies or vaccines or treatments to make sure that people don’t die from this,’ Meadows said. ‘But to suggest that we’re going to actually quarantine all of America, lock down our economy –’

‘Nobody’s saying that,’ Tapper cut in.

‘Well they are, Joe Biden’s saying that. He says, lock everybody down, we’re going to have a dark winter,’ Meadows said, taking a jab at the Democratic nominee’s comments from the debate in Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday.

‘That’s what health officials say,’ Tapper said, launching the two into a series of cross-talk points.

There are a variety of responses we can take to COVID-19 as evidenced by the different responses that states are taking. It is a perfectly reasonable policy choice to think that containment is a losing strategy – that cow left the barn in February – and focus efforts on treatments and vaccines. Yet Tapper, rabid liberal attack dog that he is, and other liberals choose to use the policy choice to accuse the Trump administration of being monsters. We would all be better off if we could have a rational discussion about our response to the virus without caricaturing people who disagree as wanting more people to get sick and die.