These experts are increasingly frustrated with the American political leadership from the President on down who has repeatedly shirked their national role, passed the responsibility on to citizens to decide for themselves, and has turned simple public health measures into points of discussion. divisive and partisan.
“Making it a political act is undermining the health of the nation,” said Cheryl Healton, dean of the NYU School of Global Public Health.
CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said US leaders are not yet having the necessary discussions to resolve the crisis.
“We still have these arguments about whether or not we should put these band-aids in the problem, like the masks,” Gupta said Thursday. “(They are) effective band-aids, but they’re still band-aids on this issue. And we’re still not sure we want to do that.”
“We have a patient bleeding in front of us, we know what to do and we are not doing it. And that is frustrating.”
The frustrations reflect the ever-present tensions between our collective responsibility to each other and our individualism, said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner and visiting professor at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.
But when politicians attack his evidence-based and non-ideological advice, major problems arise, Wen said.
“If President Trump or some other elected official makes wearing masks a political or partisan problem, they are also saying that the council of public health experts is partisan, and that public health in general loses the credibility it really needs. to guide this pandemic, “he said.
Public health v. Private health
The idea that people can decide what is best for them while a contagious disease is spreading is “absurd,” Healton said.
“Any one of us can be a walking weapon because we don’t know that we are infected and we are infecting others,” he said. “So the way Tony Fauci put it very articulately is that (by wearing a mask) you are protecting yourself and protecting others, and at any moment you don’t know who (you are).”
“What we did not see coming was not the virus. We did not see the complete absence of federal government leadership that we have become accustomed to in any other outbreak,” he said. “We know what to do.”
New York, once the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, used these strategies and prolonged blockade to reduce its outbreak of cases.
“You cannot have a political theory on how to deal with the virus. You cannot. It is a virus. It does not respond to political theory. It responds to science and data,” he said.
Cuomo said it was important for state and local leaders to take more responsibility rather than pass the money on to citizens.
“I understand that it is not easy. I understand that it is not popular,” he said Wednesday. “Welcome to government in the midst of a global crisis.”
In the long term, those who follow the evidence will have the best results, Dr. Wen said.
“The best we can do is with the evidence we have. I think history will confirm that those elected officials who allowed public health leaders to guide and lead them with public health and science, I think we will see that those are the places where most lives were saved, “he said.
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