by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
America has witnessed a wide range of heroes stepping forward during the pandemic and putting their own lives at risk in order to help the country make it through these awful times. Ordinary people, like gas station attendants and grocery store clerks, worked long hours for low wages in order to keep the country running and food on the tables. Others, like historically underpaid public school teachers, went back to work when the schools reopened so that parents would have a safe place to leave their children as they also returned to work. Many government employees and emergency workers had no time at all away from their jobs.
But when it comes to heroes of the pandemic, American healthcare workers are in a league of their own. Those sainted individuals waded right in among the sick and dying and never wavered as they took vitals, prescribed and administered treatments, comforted those who were never going to get better, and then turned to comfort the survivors as well. Many of those workers got sick themselves - and some even died as a result of doing their jobs.
But American healthcare workers are apparently not universally appreciated. Donald Trump has taken two opportunities within the last week to attack doctors and hospitals saying that they are labeling non-COVID deaths as being COVID-related as a way of generating more income. Last weekend in Wisconsin Trump said "doctors get more money and hospitals get more money" if COVID-19 is listed as the cause of death.
Apparently fearing that first shot was a bit too nuanced for his supporters to appreciate, Trump got a lot more specific with the allegation yesterday at a rally in Michigan. The politician who is known for his propensity for lying said this:
"Our doctors get more money if someone dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say 'I'm sorry but everybody dies of COVID."
And, not surprisingly, the inveterate liar cited no evidence to back up his outrageous claim.
Yesterday, after Trump's assertion that doctors were intentionally inflating the numbers of COVID deaths, the American Medical Association shot back that his claim was "malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided." Susan Bailey, the head of the AMA, spoke of the work that doctors, nurses, and frontline healthcare workers have done for their patients and said, "They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took." Bailey emphatically denied that doctors were over-counting patients.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, also has a job that is a public trust, and not only has he skirted and avoided his duties throughout his time in office, he has also continuously used his public office for personal gain.
If Donald Trump did his job even a tenth as well as most of our medical professionals do theirs, many more Americans would be alive today. Trump hasn't kept anyone safe - but thousands and thousands of America's doctors and other heroic medical personnel have.
Donald Trump owes America's medical professionals a big apology - and then he needs to sit down and shut the hell up!
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