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The coronavirus has made it clear that there are two Americas, the America in which Donald Trump lives and the America in which my father died. Trump was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center early in his illness. There he had access to an army of specialists, 24/7 monitoring of the best doctors and nurses, and experimental drugs denied to almost everyone else with the coronavirus.
My father had similar symptoms (low fever, chills, cough, low energy) once he contracted the virus, but the clinic he visited told him to go home and go to the hospital only if he couldn’t breathe. He was sent home on a Friday, and by the following Tuesday his health had deteriorated so badly that it led to his untimely death..
Would my father be alive right now if he had received a small fraction of the attention that Trump receives? If the hospital had the ability to admit my father as a “precaution,” would my father still be here? He deserved that opportunity.
Like Juan Carlos “Charlie” Rangel, who had to wait three hours when his daughter Rosemary Rangel Gutiérrez called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. When Charlie’s condition deteriorated, Rose’s younger sister took him to the hospital herself. She died days later. And Rosie Davis’s mother, Mary Castro, who lived in a nursing home and had to wait days to go to the hospital after first showing symptoms of Covid-19. If Charlie and Mary had access to care that prioritized “precaution galore,” would they still be here today, too?
