Trump doesn't care about your health. I'm a doctor, I know

As a hospital physician who treats the most sick and vulnerable, I must argue against voting for Donald Trump for president and against any MAGA-inspired politician who follows him.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew
| Opinion Contributor

Early 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemicI distinctly remember encountering a patient in my hospital who died of respiratory failure – unfortunately not unusual appearance during that time. What struck me was that no matter how much oxygen he was connected to, my patient never took off his red “Make America Great Again” hat. And every time I came in, between his labored breaths, he would grumble about how bad Dr. Anthony Fauci was, how the new released mRNA vaccines were dangerous, and how the Democrats wanted to control us with a masking policy.

Experiences like these have highlighted in my mind how closely politics can be tied to healthcare. Starting from the top, trust in our public health system and in science itself could influence people to make healthier choices; on the other hand, leaders who breed distrust in these institutions can lead to death and suffering.

With this year’s election, we once again have a choice between a leader who advocates for evidence-based public health, versus the exact same man and his political faction that helped create such hostility toward this health care system. In my experience as a hospital physician treating the most sick and vulnerable, I must argue against voting for Donald Trump for president and against any MAGA-inspired politician who follows him.

Looking at Trump’s record as president under an unprecedented public health emergency, we can see how a second Trump administration would respond to another disaster. While no one could have predicted the devastation of COVID-19, Trump minimized the growing threatsaying it would “go away,” while subtly fueling racist impulses with the term “China virus.”

Trump subsequently refused to implement full mask mandates or social distancing, undermining his top public health adviser, Dr. Fauci. He repeatedly questioned the severity of the threat even as people died, implying that widespread testing was being done artificially the case numbers inflated. He said COVID-19 “affects virtually no one”, while Americans died by the thousands.

By minimizing the threat of the coronavirus, he weakened the case for citizens to protect themselves and their loved ones.

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Trump’s version of the death of ‘almost no one’ was equated with this more than 1 million Americans dies from COVID-19 in just under 2.5 years. There are some estimates that the Trump administration’s mismanagement of this crisis and mixed public health messaging contributed to more than 400,000 of these deaths.

Let that sink in.

400,000 Americans – grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers – who did not return to the dinner table because they listened to the president’s wayward and foolish words.

I look forward to what a new Trump administration may bring and fear for the health and safety of our sick, our elderly, and our vulnerable.

He says he did “concepts” of a health care planwhich has yet to be released. But during his previous term he had taken steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act – that thousands of Americans rely on. With four more years he would probably weaken it even further.

Trump has done little to curb gun violence, and he has bragged that they did nothing to regulate firearms even as more mass shootings have occurred.

He and the far-right Republicans continue to do so politicize scientific issuessuch as climate change, and calls it a hoax invented by China.

His allies have even gone so far block funding for the “Cancer Moonshot” initiativewhich aims to halve cancer deaths and even cure cancer simply because it is associated with President Joe Biden.

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The policies of Trump and the MAGA faction reflect that he does not care about the health of Americans. He cares about getting elected, he cares about the size of his audience, he cares about how he is perceived – but he certainly doesn’t care about real American health care problems. His rhetoric and record show he doesn’t care or believe in expanding health care to more vulnerable populations, how a warming planet is increasing chronic disease, how guns continue to kill innocent children.

And he certainly didn’t care about my patient in his MAGA hat, someone he may have considered a “virtual nobody” who ultimately died of COVID-19. We cannot risk our health and safety with another four years under Donald Trump or his MAGA allies.

Vote as if your life, and the lives of all Americans, depend on it.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley. All opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on X: @ThomasLewMD