An Open Letter to President Trump
By: Katayoon Tayebi
Tags: Military, Covid 19, Trump Administration, Medical, Ppe

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

The last few weeks I’ve been hearing a lot that we are at “war.” I’ve been hearing that our physicians, nurses and medical personnel are on the “front lines” and that they are akin to military workers. The rhetoric supports the narrative that our physicians, nurses, and medical personnel are our army, each one of them a solider fighting to protect us from an unseen, unheard, common enemy. However, before we have even hit our peak of infection, our hospitals across the US are running out of masks, gowns, gloves, sanitizer, goggles, etc., known as personal protective equipment or “PPE,” while the mortality rate for healthcare workers is 14%. If our medical military is expected to fight and win this war, should they not go into battle fully armed?

Let me remind you that each of the soldiers in the medical military fought their own fight to be where they are today. Each physician spent their undergraduate years taking biochemistry classes and working in cadaver labs. Most missed out on study abroad trips and parties with their friends to be in libraries studying to make grades that would get them admitted to some of the most competitive medical programs in the world. Many moved far away from their families and friends to attend these schools where they spent their time taking countless exams and working in labs. The majority spent their late 20s in residency programs working twenty-eight hour shifts, often overnight, for $50,000 salaries. Some did fellowship programs allowing them to specialize and adding another 3–4 years to their training. A majority of them ended up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for their education.

Now we are in a global pandemic that we are not prepared to handle. Now, we are asking them fight for us, to take on new titles as “soldiers” and fight on the “front lines,” — we are asking them to be heroes and martyrs for the good of the masses. In many ways they have been drafted — becoming the soldiers that many of them never expected, to be. My question for you is this: did we send our soldiers to the front lines in Germany or Korea, or Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Iraq without weapons? Have we ever, in our history, sent our soldiers to the front lines completely defenseless and won?

Mr. President, if this is not a war and does not require wartime measures, our physicians, nurses, and medical personnel do not need to be soldiers. If we are satisfied that they are simply specialized employees, then like any other employee, they have the right to a safe workplace. That means that if they do not have the requisite PPE — they have the right and the power to walk away. If you do not want to be our Commander in Chief, if the federal government is not a “shipping clerk,” our physicians, nurses and medical personnel cannot be called our soldiers. They have no duty to put their lives at risk and be the heroes you are asking them to be without the proper protective equipment they need.

If, however, you are calling this a “war,” and calling the physicians, nurses, and medical personnel who have to be on the front lines, “soldiers” — if they have been drafted and we are asking them to fight — if this is no longer just a job for them, then your administration needs to understand that we are at war and that wartime measures need to be taken to guarantee that our soldiers do not go to the front lines empty handed and expected to win. I can assure you that we will not win that war. Our medical military will all be casualties — causalities whose blood will be on your administration’s hands. Be their Commander in Chief, get them what they need to win.

Sincerely,

A possible future COVID19 patient

Ask the President to use the Defense Production Act by sharing this via Twitter, calling the White House Switchboard at (202) 456–1414, the United State Capitol switchboard at (202) 224–3121, sending this to your elected representatives (whoismyrepresentative.com).