10 Expectations of Our American Leaders

A Citizen’s Response to the Moving of the Testing Goalposts

Julio Vincent Gambuto
LEVEL
Published in
7 min readMay 7, 2020

--

President Trump with members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing at the White House on April 24, 2020. Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images

This week, the new White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked whether all Americans should be able to get tested for Covid-19 before they go back to work. Her reply was that “the notion that everyone needs to be tested is just simply nonsensical.” She then went on to explain that the Trump Administration will “deploy testing strategically, because that’s what the American public expects of us.”

Is that what we expect of you?

As we begin to reopen our country after this once-in-a-lifetime pause, no matter where you live, what you do for work, or which political party you support, we, as citizens, must be a strong voice in this conversation. We are the American public. We must be loud and clear about what we expect.

The death toll is staggering: over 70,000 Americans — people you and I know and love — have died across this country in two months’ time. That is more American lives lost to the crisis so far than during the Vietnam War. Here in New York, we have now lost more than four times the number of people than were taken…

--

--

Julio Vincent Gambuto
LEVEL
Writer for

Self-help meets the system. Happiness in a fucked-up world. Author of “Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!” from Avid Reader Press at S&S // juliovincent.com