Last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial board argued for quickly lifting social-distancing health measures because these were hurting “the economy” — i.e., corporate profits. On Sunday, Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein echoed this call. And now it appears that the White House may be willing to heed their advice: On Sunday evening, President Trump announced that he’ll soon consider lifting our country’s already inadequate social-distancing measures.

It’s hard to imagine a starker illustration of the contradiction between public health needs and capitalist profit-making. The US government’s too-delayed, too-limited response to the coronavirus potentially put millions of lives at risk. For weeks, Trump downplayed the virus and delayed taking action because he didn’t want to take any measures that might disrupt the economy. As the New York Times reports, “only when the disruption came anyway, in the form of a historic stock market sell-off, was he convinced to act.”

Those delays have cost countless lives. We have now reached the point where, according to some experts, only a five-week national lockdown can avoid a public health catastrophe. Yet the Wall Street Journal and the Lloyd Blankfeins of the world are proposing the exact opposite: ending lockdowns rather than extending them. Even the limited governmental measures taken so far are apparently too much for Wall Street to stomach.