[Chicks]

Trump's risky behavior goes viral

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthca...ior-goes-viral

With the president*’s illness, the cruel bite of the pandemic has turned on one who thought he might ignore it. Many have noted that pandemics respect no individual or group, including leaders in the UK and Brazil before President* Trump. So it has now engulfed one who thought it might just go away, “like a miracle.”

But this too is an expression of the president*’s dangerousness. The scorn for protections, wearing masks and distancing, manifest in the willful convening of enormous, maskless and crowded rallies or the mocking of former Vice President Biden for wearing a mask, have had their impacts.

Polls show a close relationship between the approval of President* Trump’s handling of the pandemic and individuals declining to wear masks and saying they would refuse a vaccine. In addition to those who may have been directly affected by spreader events, these all have contributed to the huge number of cases and proliferation of virus that increase opportunities for infection in all our lives, and the willful dismissal of precautions in his coterie that likely led to his own.

President* Trump has put millions of lives in danger, including his own; but we can mitigate that. Individually, we can save tens of thousands of lives incrementally, despite his recklessness. Our tools are simple, universally available, and of proven potency: masks, hand washing, and social distancing.

Edwin B. Fisher, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Robert M. Kaplan, Ph.D., is a professor at the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center, and, previously, an associate director of the National Institutes of Health. Leonard L. Glass, M.D., M.P.H., is a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Real doctors, telling the truth about Donny and Trumpworld.