Not since World War II has humanity faced a challenge on the scale of this coronavirus pandemic.

I’m writing to you today to share a little bit about how Public Citizen will help you stay informed and involved.

Going forward, keep an eye on your inbox for more frequent updates from me and my staff about public health efforts — along with economic and political developments — as our nation and the world grapple with the crisis.

We are all in this together.

I mean that two ways:

One, if we work together — with sacrifice and cooperation, perseverance and compassion — we will get through this.

But also, whatever happens — good or bad — happens to ALL of us. The virus doesn’t care how much money a person has or who they voted for. Unlike Donald Trump, it doesn’t discriminate based on ethnicity, sexuality, religious views, gender identity or anything else. Believing disinformation and behaving selfishly endangers everyone.

And it’s not a “Chinese virus,” in Trump’s racist and idiotic phrasing. (If anything, we should be talking about the Trump Pandemic, since no one has done more to spread the coronavirus through disinformation, scientific muzzling and utter, jaw-dropping incompetence.)

So, what do we do?

For starters, be safe. For yourself, for your loved ones, for neighbors near and far.

Do all you can to follow recommendations from health experts about hygiene, social interactions, and what to do if you think you might be sick.

Then, even from home, we have to campaign and advocate — to secure public health, to defend worker rights, to prevent corporate profiteering and opportunism, to jump-start the economy, to care for the most vulnerable, and to safeguard our democracy.

• We must guarantee free testing, free treatment and free vaccines for all. The only way to end the epidemic is to make sure EVERYONE is protected.

• We have to ensure that monetary assistance from the government helps everyday Americans weather this storm and recover afterward, not line the pockets of CEOs who have been raking in record profits and sitting on offshore mountains of cash.

• We absolutely will not permit Big Pharma to profiteer from this global crisis with immoral price gouging and monopolies around any treatments or vaccines.

• We must help make a vaccine available around the world, not just in America.

• We can’t let corporate lackeys in Congress — from either party — use coronavirus as an excuse to weaken even more the regulatory safeguards we all depend on.

• We have to demand that giant employers provide sick leave and basic protections to their workers.

• We can not allow Donald Trump to initiate or inflame military tensions, or to continue demonizing people from other countries, under the pretense of fighting the pandemic.

• We must not let this emergency be manipulated to further erode privacy rights or to take us another step down the road to a police state.

• We must ensure that health workers are guaranteed proper protective equipment.

• We have to protect working families from eviction or foreclosure, utility shut-offs, and food insecurity.

• We need vote-by-mail systems in place so that the elections can proceed in November, whatever the state of the pandemic.

That’s just a starting list.

But there is one through line: We are in this together, and the only way we get through it is together.

Stay tuned over the days and weeks ahead for much more.

And stay safe.

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
 
 
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