In an unprecedented foray into the political realm, the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial titled “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum,” calling on voters to vote out political leaders who have not done enough to battle the coronavirus pandemic, NBC News reports.
“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.”
Thirty-five editors sign the statement, which did not mention President Trump or republican leaders by name but specified actions they did or did not take to curb the spread of the virus while promoting disinformation.
“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 noted that science and medicine is not a partisan issue, and that public health should be a unifying quest absent of any political agenda.