Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) believes it’s “overkill” for schools in his home state to be closed just because there’s a pandemic raging through the country that could kill as many as 240,000 people, making him the latest Republican to try and downplay the severity of the virus that has brought the nation to a virtual standstill.

Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle” Tuesday evening, Nunes said he firmly believes that the spread of COVID-19 can be contained and everything in the United States can return to normal in two to four weeks:

“The schools were just canceled out here in California, which is way overkill. It’s possible schools could’ve gone back to school in two to four weeks.”

Though he provided no evidence to support his specious assertion, Nunes went on to suggest that the economic damage caused by having the nation in lockdown is too high of a price to pay to save lives:

“If we don’t start to get people back to work in this country over the next week to two weeks, I don’t believe we can wait until the end of April. I just don’t know of any economy that’s survived where you’ve unplugged the entire economy and expect things to go back and be normal.”

Nunes also posited that existing drugs should be used to treat those with coronavirus, even though there is no empirical evidence that such pharmaceuticals do a bit of good in treading the disease:

“I think that the drugs that are on the market now, look how quick we were able to get this approved, this new malaria drug. That you have been talking about every night. There’s a lot of optimism here that we have in some of these drugs that are coming online. The vaccines are going to take a while, but look; we have this bill that we just passed last week, $2.2 trillion worth, we have to focus on keeping people employed.”

And there you have it: The bottom line for Republicans is that human life must always take a back seat to commerce and profit. We’re all expendable in Congressman Nunes’ view of the world. All that matters is the almighty dollar. If millions have to die as a consequence, that’s just too bad.

The GOP wants us to believe they’re “pro-life.” But their actions speak so much louder than their words.