How Trump failed the country during pandemic

To the Times:

I am a retired cardiologist who is extremely disturbed by our country’s response to the pandemic. A lot of people are confused because of the medical misinformation coming out of the White House and on the Internet. I want people to know what the vast majority of physicians really think about our COVID response.

President Trump has done some things correctly, but most of his actions have been questionable at best and outright dangerous at worst. He quickly closed the country to China, but 40,000 people still came in directly from China and many more came in indirectly via Europe. Claims that he saved hundreds of thousands of people are greatly exaggerated. Almost everything he has done since then has failed, as evidenced by the fact that we have 4.2% of the world’s population and

20.6% of the world’s CO

VID-19 deaths - despite having great wealth, the world’s leading scientists and most advanced medical technology.

These statistics are compiled by highly credible people who have no political agenda. Unfortunately, however, Trump supporters dismiss these statistics, like everything else they don’t want to hear, as “fake news” - Trump’s most brilliant invention. Given that Trump is consumed with being re-elected, he could have achieved his goal by protecting the American people from COVID-19. Limiting the impact of the virus and showing Americans that he cared about their well being would have increased his chances considerably.

But that would have meant listening to his medical advisors, a choice that anyone else without a science background surely would have made. In his own words, he “played down” the virus and deceived the public, many of whom believed and still believe him. When people started getting sick and dying in large numbers, Trump could have changed course and done what scientists recommended, but he found it easier to let people suffer and die than admit he was wrong. Trump has ignored the advice of the leading experts, promoted questionable therapies, interfered with and damaged the credibility of the CDC and FDA.

He was advised by his experts in the beginning to shut down the entire country, which European countries did with success. Had he done that there would have been a fraction of the illness and death that has taken place. At the Republican Convention, he and his supporters bragged about his excellent management of coronavirus and talked as if it were a thing of the past. All along, he has deliberately spread misinformation and he recently had his flunkies change CDC guidelines against the recommendations of scientists. At present, the virus is running rampant throughout the country, and Trump has yet to develop a strategy. His continued opposition to testing so that “his numbers” don’t look bad is nothing short of psychotic.

Americans want their president to be great and want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Trump counts on those facts and the fact that he thinks Americans are stupid. He recently gave himself an A+ and said that without him there would have been 2 million deaths instead of 200,000. The truth is there would have been 20-40,000 deaths with almost anyone else but him in charge.

Trump has taken a logical step in helping to fund vaccine development by drug companies, but that is where the line should be drawn. Those guiding Trump so far have failed to prevent him from treading where he does not belong. Trump should have no say as to when any vaccine is approved by the FDA. Important decisions on vaccine safety and efficacy need to be made by medical professionals. Countless people will have gotten sick or died before the pandemic is over, with many unforeseen consequences. The mental toll on those infected and their families is incalculable. Those who survive are often sick for many months and some may never get better.

Those who are asymptomatic or minimally ill may not be safe; 15% of young athletes so afflicted have shown evidence of myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, which can lead to congestive heart failure or sudden death. The final toll of illness and death will be enormous, at least 7580% directly due to Donald Trump It is especially hard for physicians to listen to the blatant lies and bizarre rationalizations of Trump and his apologists.

Physicians are the people who deal most directly with the consequences of Trump’s blunders. Many physicians have gotten infected and died trying to save people unnecessarily infected. Physicians know the medical catastrophe could not have happened without the complicity of republican house members and senators who backed everything Trump did despite knowing full well his directives were nonsensical. They have been willing to see millions of people get sick and hundreds of thousands die in order to further their careers and maintain power. History will remember them unkindly. One wonders how they can sleep at night when they have so much blood on their hands.

Michael B. Goodkin, M.D., F.A.C.C., Media, Ellen Bluestone, Ph.D, Philadelphia