If you're feeling bored, worried, stir-crazy, blissfully relaxed, afraid, helpless, alone, anxious, grateful, overwhelmed, or any other human response to our current events, perhaps you will consider joining me in lobbying elected representatives on behalf of our courageous healthcare workers working diligently to keep us safe and well. Here's the letter I wrote to mine:
Dear [Representative],
My husband is an emergency physician with the Veteran’s Administration and at multiple hospitals in Southeast Michigan. We have friends and colleagues who are nurses and healthcare workers all over the state of Michigan. By all reports, the shortage and associated risk of inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in our hospitals is alarmingly real. We must call on our businesses and government agencies to address this increasing threat to the front-line workers who are risking their lives to combat Covid-19 and the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Quoting Massachusetts emergency physician, Dr. Joshua Lerner, “Our country won two world wars because the entire country mobilized. We out-produced and we out-manufactured while our soldiers out-fought the enemy. We need to do that again because make no mistake, we are at war, healthcare workers are your soldiers, and the war has just begun.”
This is NOT the time for the CDC to be loosening guidelines! This is the time to be pressuring our elected officials and industry leaders to join the fight. There are billion-dollar companies in America that are capable of making PPE products. Retooling for the production of N95masks, surgical masks, face shields, goggles, gowns, nitrile gloves, detergents, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes should be a top priority for our manufacturing giants in the U.S. right now. We have highly sophisticated distribution companies like Amazon who have already mastered fast and efficient delivery of products are capable of getting the necessary supplies to the hospitals and healthcare workers that desperately need them NOW.
I implore you and your colleagues in Congress and the White House to prioritize this issue, lobby for our brave and willing healthcare soldiers, and invoke the Defense Production Act.
Sincerely,
Emily Olson
Constituent, 7th Congressional District of Michigan
