New England Medical Journal Calls Trump Admin ‘Dangerously Incompetent’ Over Handling of COVID. It has never weighted in on a presidential election before, in 2020 they felt they had no choice but to weigh in and underscore what an absolute disaster the self-serving trump administration has been for our country and the health of its citizens. Traitorous is not too light a description for what this administration is all about.
In a First, New England Journal of Medicine Joins Never-TrumpersEditors at the world’s leading medical journal said the Trump administration “took a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”
By Gina Kolata, Oct. 7, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/health/new-england-journal-trump.html
Throughout its 208-year history, The New England Journal of Medicine has remained staunchly nonpartisan. The world’s most prestigious medical journal has never supported or condemned a political candidate.
Until now.
In an editorial signed by 34 editors who are United States citizens (one editor is not) and published on Wednesday, the journal said the Trump administration had responded so poorly to the coronavirus pandemic that they “have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.” …
EDITORIALDying in a Leadership Vacuum
The Editors of the New England Journal of Medicine.
October 8, 2020
N Engl J Med 2020; 383:1479-1480
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe2029812www _ nejm _ org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812
Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.
The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,1 the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.
We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States …
… Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.