In the End, Truth Always Matters
By Amanda Schleede | Founder/CEO, Attend Safe
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” — Winston Churchill
In a week with so much focus on Britannia, that quote from its greatest prime minister came to mind in response to the U.S. president saying the coronavirus pandemic was over — barely a month after recovering from his own rebound case of the disease — and at a moment when close to 400 Americans still die every day from COVID-19 infections. That mortality rate is roughly the same as having the deaths from a new 9/11 attack every week.
Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, responded to the president in an Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times, “Well into our third year of battling COVID-19, we all wish that were true. But unfortunately, that is a fantasy right now. All the data tell us the virus is not contained. Far too many people are dying and suffering. And new, worrisome variants are on the horizon.” I feel the same.
Topol is one of the top-10, most-cited researchers in medicine and recipient of a National Institutes of Health grant to play a major role leading the Precision Medicine Initiative.
He also responded to the president on Twitter, saying in part, “What’s over is [the president’s] and our government’s will to get ahead of it. … Ignores [long COVID], inevitability of new variants, and our current incapability for blocking infections and transmission.”
I’m grateful anytime a leading medical doctor or research scientist (or both, in the case of Topol) echoes things that I’ve said.
Late last spring, we reached a sort of stabilization in the pandemic. It was still bad, but after what we’d been through, maybe it didn’t seem so bad to some. We suffered more than a million U.S. deaths in the pandemic’s first two years — that’s two-and-a-half times as many deaths as the U.S. military suffered in four years of World War II, by the way — so maybe people just feel so numbed by that level of disaster that a 9/11 each week doesn’t register anymore.
I don’t think those are acceptable losses.
I don’t think President Joe Biden thinks they are either, but his message will make it harder to get those who are still vaccine-reluctant to get vaccinated. All they’ll hear is, “It’s over.” Then they’ll act as if it’s really over, which will likely include taking a pass on getting vaccinated.
That casual message has the potential to cause suffering, just as the previous president’s mixed messages implying everything from the pandemic being a hoax to injecting bleach (which can kill you — don’t try it) or swallowing animal medications led to plenty of people who, even today, still buy into long-disproved hoaxes and lies.
There’s the message for all my aspiring leaders: In the end, truth always matters.
Amanda Schleede is founder and CEO of Attend Safe, which helps people attend to life with secure, safe and sensible protocols. Her crisis leadership enables critical events to proceed through safety-conscious protections. By sharing her knowledge in Tuesday Tutor, she hopes others will benefit from her experience. Visit Attend Safe online at AttendSafe.com.