President Trump will watch over seniors, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says seniors will die willingly; the issue is lack of hospital beds for Millennials & kids

Repeat the mantra "the issue is lack of hospital beds for Millennials and kids."

It is truly frustrating to watch the Republicans strategically mislead Americans and not see any sign of a timely Democratic effort to counter the propaganda.

Today we have the headline about a Trump tweet Trump again breaks with experts by calling for people to go back to work, claims seniors 'will be watched over protectively & lovingly' and yesterday we had the headline Texas Lt. Gov.: Grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy.

Both these Republicans know that keeping senior citizens alive is not the issue driving the "shelter-in-place" policies closing down businesses. (Note: this writer is a 75 year old senior.) The problem is simple and one most Americans will deny knowing anything about - we have a shortage of hospital beds.

 It is a situation deliberately created by we members of the still-living generations who preceded the Millennials into adulthood, a situation which looks like this statistically:

Let's be very clear about this. In the United States there are 74% fewer hospital beds available to Americans per capita than there were in the year Jack Kennedy was elected President.

It was a deliberate choice made by Republicans, Democrats, and independents, by Bernie socialists and Koch capitalists. Any attempt to support through taxation the 1960 level of hospital beds per American would have meant most American families would not have had the money to buy more than one cell phone in the past five years. And there is nobody reading this who would have agreed to that.

When confronted with a situation where we don't have enough beds to meet the threat of a pandemic, we must attempt to reduce the number of people who are sick at any one time. That's why we are now sacrificing the economic gains  made in the 21st Century, which was wealth not equitably distributed. Republicans don't like this as they know Americans of all parties are going to be unhappy come November. They won't be able to buy the new iPhone for Christmas. They might vote Trump out.

The National Democratic Party leadership must strategically counter the Republican "blame it on dying seniors" strategy. I suggest repeating the mantra "the issue is lack of hospital beds for Millennials and kids."