Mr. President, Value Lives Over Business

  • Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Dear Mr. President,

Do you wish to be the president who, by lifting restrictions necessary to slow the spread of COVID19 too soon, caused thousands upon thousands of unnecessary deaths? Do you wish to be the president who also left even more thousands with seriously impaired lung function by the same action? That will be your legacy if you carry out your threat to call industries back to production after April 7, 2020. Such a decision will fly in the face of all the expert advice of your COVID-19 Task Force. The consequences will be catastrophic.

Two-year-old children think they know everything. They don’t. Neither do you. Two-year-old children think they can do anything they want because they are all-powerful. They aren’t. Neither are you.

Please take the advice of your Task Force. Please heed the desperate pleading of governors all over the United States. Use your authority under the Defense Production Act to make available all existing resources to those who are working as hard as they can to control the spread of this disease and to treat those who are suffering with it.

As President and leader of the Executive Branch of our government, your first duty is to assure the safety of the population. Among our rights, the first is pursuit of life. That should be your highest priority. Instead, you appear to value business and the performance of the stock market over health. Without healthy people, there is no industry; there is no stock market. They depend on citizens working at every level. That is why our Constitution places pursuit of life first; you should too.

Please release our stockpiles of ventilators. Please do everything you can to produce additional badly needed respirators as well as N19 masks and other personal protection equipment. Please do everything you can to distribute test kits for COVID-19 Please do everything you can to distribute those items where the number of COVID-19 patients is highest. And most of all, please heed the advice of the experts you have assembled as the COVID-19 Task Force. Then you can be the president who managed the COVID-19 pandemic as well as possible and thereby saved thousands upon thousands of lives and, ultimately, businesses and the stock market.
Sincerely,

Nancy U. Cairns


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