Long-time CNBC editor Rick Santelli has apologized for suggesting that everyone should be exposed to the coronavirus — to get it over with now — in order to protect the health of global and domestic markets.
“Yesterday, during a segment on The Exchange, I said maybe it would be a good idea to expose everybody to the coronavirus — maybe it would be better off for the economy, or the global economy, or the markets in general,” Santelli said Friday, reports CNBC.
“It was the dumbest, most ignorant stupid thing anybody could have ever said.”
According to Market Watch, Santelli made the original comments on Thursday during a segment of “The Exchange,” an investment and business news show.
“I’m not a doctor. All I know is, think about how the world would be if we tried to quarantine everyone because of the generic-type flu. Now I’m not saying this is the generic-type flu, but maybe we’d be just better off if we gave it to everybody and then in a month it would be over,” he said.
“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,” said Santelli.
During his apology, the markets correspondent explained that the mass-infection idea occurred to him due to his experience with virus exposure parties as a child.
“When I was young, if you got measles, chickenpox, mumps, my parents and other parents would not only put family together, sometimes they’d bring other students together to expediate the process,” said Santelli. “It was just a stupid thing to say, it’s not appropriate in this instance.”
After Santelli apologized, a network co-host also chimed in: “Right, we talk money, but we know what’s really important Rick, and we need to always have that in the front of our minds.”
After Santelli made the original comments, Market Watch reported that between 4 and 11 million people could die if the whole country were simultaneously infected. However, these estimates are based on reported coronavirus cases, and would also not account for the strain on the healthcare system, reports the news agency.
According to The Daily Wire, the stock market went into a partial correction Monday after previously experiencing the worst week since the 2009 financial crisis. During the partial correction, the Dow Jones industrial average increased by 1293.96 points — the largest gain in a single day ever. Furthermore, the S&P 500 closed at 3,090.23 after increasing by 4.6%.
But over the week the markets have continued to perform unpredictably, and the S&P 500 mostly “erased gains made earlier in the week,” reports Business Insider. The Dow Jones also lost 257 points Friday, or about 1%, as fears over coronavirus abound.
However, the Trump administration released a jobs report on Friday that shows the nation is currently experiencing a 3.5% unemployment rate, the lowest rate in the last fifty years. In total, the economy added 273,000 jobs during February, with the most jobs being added in the healthcare and food service industries.
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