Thread by @Craig_A_Spencer

We are facing two simultaneous and unprecedented threats to public health.

One is #COVID19.

The other is the President of the United States...

THREAD 👇

We all know why #COVID19 is a huge threat.

But the president!? That’s excessive, no?!

No. Not at all.

Because at every step he has failed to respond and take this pandemic seriously.

He has actively undermined public health and taken zero accountability for his failures.

If you don’t know me, I’ve been calling this administration’s response an abject failure for some time.

But why should my opinion matter?

I’m an ER doc that treated 100s of COVID patients in NYC. I work in epidemic response, including Ebola. And I’m a public health professor.

In March, I was on the frontlines of #COVID19 in NYC.

Nearly every day I held the hands of patients who died from this horrible disease.

And the whole time, President Trump delayed, dithered, and downplayed it all as a ‘common flu’ that will ‘like a miracle’ disappear.

To be fair, I’ve been really worried for a long time that President Trump’s White House wasn’t taking preparedness for emerging global health threats like #COVID19 seriously.

So much so that I wrote this opinion piece in @thehill in February 2017:

thehill.com/blogs/pundits-…

Heres the sadly prescient summary:

“The White House is writing a prescription for an American public health catastrophe by questioning the value of prevention and preparedness for emerging global health threats.”

Like many others I was frightened by how he’d manage an outbreak.

A year later, and witnessing attacks on our preparedness infrastructure, my worry had only increased. Seeing that we had forgotten the lessons learned in battling Ebola, I wrote the following perspective piece for @ghn_news in June 2018:

globalhealthnow.org/2018-06/lesson…

Sadly prescient summary part 2:

“I’m not optimistic this administration will heed the advice to identify the funding and leadership necessary for epidemic response.”

All this is to say that in the event of a pandemic, I wasn’t expecting much at all from this president.

Yet from day 1 President Trump has failed to meet even that low bar.

At every point he has failed.

Failed to recognize the magnitude of the crisis.

Failed to protect frontline providers.

Failed to support our public health institutions that could lead us through this crisis.

Months ago at the onset of the pandemic, we were critically short on masks and PPE needed to keep healthcare workers and other frontline providers safe.

We raised the alarm. We begged for assistance.

We implored the President to invoke the Defense Production Act to get us PPE. It never happened.

We still don’t have enough to safely do our job all across this country.

Thousands of healthcare workers have fallen ill & hundreds have died from #COVID19.

thehill.com/opinion/health…

And his lies on #COVID19 are so many & so frequent, us public health professionals can’t keep up with battling the misinformation that is endangering American lives.

We shouldn’t be fighting against the president, we should be fighting with him.

newsweek.com/im-er-doctor-f…

Plus he has deliberately undermined our public health institutions and professionals since the outset.

By sidelining the CDC and other voices of reason, we’ve set ourselves on a collision course.

And Almost. Every. Single. Day. There’s something like 👇
thehill.com/homenews/admin…

But honestly the last straw for me was his interview today on @FoxNews.

Watching him so callously and ignorantly talk about all the Americans who’ve died from #COVID19 was so painful. Especially since I was at the bedside of so many of them.

Instead of recognizing the magnitude of our loss, we’re told we have the ‘best’ mortality rate in the world.

Instead of admitting the truth and committing to do better, he wags a white sheet of paper with a few bolded words as proof that >140,000 American deaths is the ‘best’.

So, what‘s the ultimate price of Trump’s horrible handling of this pandemic?

It’s continued risk for healthcare providers like my friend & real American hero @Cleavon_MD, an Iraq vet who was on the #COVID19 frontlines in NYC and months later is now having to do it again in AZ.

https://twitter.com/cleavon_md/status/1283999818344304640

And most painfully, it’s those 140k American lives already lost.

So many of which could’ve been prevented, if only we had a leader who cared and tried.

And that horrible toll is only a fraction of the amount that’ll ultimately and unnecessarily succumb to this disease.

Some of your friends and family members who are with you today will be gone in the coming weeks and months.

Because we failed. Because he failed.

Some of you will say I’m ‘fear-mongering’. Hope you’re the lucky ones who don’t learn the hard way.

Undoubtedly, just for writing this I’ll get some choice messages, like below.

And some people will say “I liked you so much better when you shared heartfelt stories and weren’t so political!”

Well guess what. Too damn bad.

American lives are at stake. Silence is not an option.

The sad reality is if Trump literally didn’t lie and mislead since the beginning of the pandemic, more Americans would be alive today.

If he didn’t undermine our most important public health institutions throughout, more Americans would be alive today.

If he just accepted responsibility for managing this crisis instead of always blaming others for his abject failure, more Americans would be alive today.

If we’re gonna get out of this alive, we’re gonna have to do this on our own. Without him. Despite him.

Be safe, please. ❤️

cc: @realDonaldTrump, @WhiteHouse