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Trump doesn’t care about your health. I’m a doctor I know
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Trump doesn’t care about your health. I’m a doctor I know


As a hospital doctor treating the sickest and most vulnerable, I must advocate against voting for Donald Trump for president and any MAGA-inspired politician who follows him.

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In early 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemicI clearly remember caring for a patient in my hospital who was dying from respiratory failure; Unfortunately, it is not a rare occurrence during that time. What stands out in my mind is that no matter how much oxygen he was hooked up to, my patient never took off his red “Make America Great Again” hat. And every time I walked in, between his labored breaths, he complained about how evil Dr. Anthony Fauci was, how the newcomer mRNA vaccines launched They were dangerous and how the Democrats wanted to control us with masking policies.

Experiences like this crystallized in my mind how closely related politics can be to healthcare. Starting from the top, trust in our public health system and in science itself could influence people to make healthier choices; On the other hand, leaders who generate distrust in these institutions could cause death and suffering.

With this year’s election, we once again have a choice between a leader who advocates for evidence-based public health and the exact same man and his political faction that helped create such animosity toward it. In my experience as a doctor in a hospital treating the sickest and most vulnerable, I must advocate against voting for Donald Trump for president and any MAGA-inspired politician who follows him.

If we look at Trump’s record, presiding under an unprecedented public health emergency, we can see how a second Trump administration would respond to another disaster. Although no one could have predicted the devastation of COVID-19, Trump downplayed growing threatsaying it would “disappear” while subtly fueling racist impulses with the term “chinese virus.”

Trump then refused to fully endorse mask mandates or social distancing, and undermined his top public health adviser, Dr. Fauci. He repeatedly questioned the seriousness of the threat, even as people died, implying that widespread testing carried out artificially inflated case numbers. He said COVID-19”It affects practically no one”, while Americans died by the thousands.

By downplaying the threat of the coronavirus, he weakened citizens’ arguments to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Opinion: COVID, flu and RSV are still here. ‘Tripledemic’ doesn’t care that we are already sick.

Trump’s Dangerous Denials of Reality Make Him Unfit for Office

Trump’s version that “virtually no one” dies is equivalent to more than 1 million Americans dying from COVID-19 in just under 2.5 years. There are some estimates that the Trump administration’s mismanagement of this crisis and conflicting public health messages contributed to more than 400,000 of these deaths.

Let that sink in.

400,000 Americans – grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers – who did not return to the table because they were listening to the president’s misguided and misguided words.

Pending what another Trump administration may bring, I fear for the health and safety of our sick, our elderly, and our vulnerable.

He says he has “concepts” of a health care planyet to be published. But during his previous term, had taken steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act – on which thousands of Americans depend. If four more years passed, it would probably weaken him even more.

Trump has done little to curb gun violence and has He boasted about doing nothing to regulate firearms. even as more mass shootings have occurred.

He and far-right Republicans continue politicize scientific issuessuch as climate change, calling it a hoax invented by China.

Their allies have even reached block funding for the “Cancer Moonshot” initiativewhose goal is to cut cancer deaths in half and even cure cancer, simply because it is associated with President Joe Biden.

Opinion: Congress voted against funding a cancer cure just to block Biden’s victory

Trump and the MAGA faction’s policies reflect that he does not care about the health of Americans. He cares about getting elected, he cares about the size of his crowd, he cares about how he is perceived, but he certainly doesn’t care about the real problems of American healthcare. His rhetoric and record show that he doesn’t care or believe in expanding health care to more vulnerable populations, how a warming planet increases chronic diseases, how guns continue to kill innocent children.

And he certainly didn’t care about my patient in his MAGA hat, someone he may have considered a “virtual nobody,” who ended up dying of COVID-19. We cannot risk our health and safety with another four years under Donald Trump or his MAGA allies.

Vote as if your life and the lives of all Americans depend on it.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and an Attending Physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley. All opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on X: @ThomasLewMD