New England Journal of Medicine: 'Dangerously incompetent' politicians must go

I suggest reading the whole article.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/leading-medical-journal-americans-must-vote-out-current-leaders-n1242487

Oct. 7, 2020, 6:30 PM EDT
By Denise Chow

The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, on Wednesday broke with a nearly two-century tradition of avoiding politics to lambast U.S. politicians for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a first for the journal, the editors called for Americans to vote out leaders who have not done enough to address the pandemic.

“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,” the editors wrote. “We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

While the 35 editors who signed the editorial did not call out President Donald Trump by name, the article is filled with allusions to his actions.

"The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate," they wrote. "The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls."

The editorial is the latest condemnation of the Trump administration from a respected scientific publication. Last month, Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden for president, the first time the venerable publication has backed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history.

The New England Journal of Medicine editorial, titled “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum,” does not endorse Biden, it offers an unsparing critique of Trump and his administration.

The editors wrote that while Covid-19 is a global crisis, the United States government has “failed at almost every step” to contain the pathogen’s spread.

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The U.S. leads the world in the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths. The country has recorded over 7.3 million infections and more than 208,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

The editorial points to early blunders such as testing shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment for health care workers, but adds that the country continues to fall short today.

“While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have,” they wrote.

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