The President Is a Threat to Public Health
What are we to do when millions of Americans blindly follow Trump's every word?
The president of the United States has said or done the following in recent weeks:
Contemplated whether people should inject disinfectant to kill COVID-19 (Nope)
Suggested that the virus will disappear without a vaccine (Nope)
Muzzled a CDC report on reopening guidelines
Encouraged governors to disobey his own administration’s recommendations
Cheered on local protests of stay-at-home orders
It’s not partisan hyperbole to say that Trump is a clear and present danger to public health.
In a sane world, we’d all tune him out and take our cues from scientists and medical professionals, the sort of experts the president barely tolerates one day and openly scorns the next.
In reality, we creep closer to a partial reopening without a reliable system of testing and tracing. We have no plan to deal with a potential second wave, no plan to address the health disparities the pandemic has laid bare, no plan to question why a supposedly unbeatable economy was brought to its knees in a matter of weeks.
With America’s COVID-19 death toll approaching 100,000, we must accept nothing less than a wholesale reckoning of the assumptions, systems, and outcomes we once deemed “normal.” There’s no going back to normal. - MS
The details from the Associated Press: The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to help struggling small businesses. The rollout told a different story.
And this is on top of existing inequities in the distribution of bank loans to small businesses:
… only 1 percent of black business owners get a bank loan during their first year of business compared with 7 percent of white owners.
… federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
I give the appearance of being optimistic. But, deep down, I just do everything I possibly can, assuming that the worst will happen, and I’ve got to stop the worst from happening.
A recent study found that some poor countries have only one equipped intensive care bed per million residents.