The prestigious Lancet medical journal published a scathing and unusual editorial Friday pleading with American voters to pick a president this election who will “understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.”
The editorial slams the Trump administration’s “inconsistent and incoherent national response” to the COVID-19 crisis as cases continue to grow.
“The administration is obsessed with magic bullets — vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear,” the editorial notes in a not-so-veiled swipe at President Donald Trump’s approach.
”But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency,” The Lancet added.
The editorial also mourns the faded glory of the once mighty Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has been slashed by repeated budget cuts by Republican administrations — and demeaned and manipulated by the Trump administration.
The CDC was a “national pillar of public health and globally respected,” once “regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control,” the editorial notes.
But the disease-fighting process has been hijacked by a partisan political approach that does not bode well for America’s fight against COVID-19, The Lancet warned.
The journal pleaded: “Americans must put a president in the White House come January 2021 who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.”
Read the entire editorial here.
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