President Donald Trump received a letter from more than 600 doctors on Tuesday, asking him to stop the "national shutdown" designed to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The letter said state-wide shutdown orders that have kept businesses shuttered and children from attending school could lead to a "mass casualty incident" that has "exponentially growing health consequences."
"We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients," the doctors wrote. "The downstream health effects ... are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error."
It details the various negative health outcomes that have occurred since the lockdown were imposed around the country. Those include people skipping routine checkups that may spot heart problems or cancer, substance and alcohol misuse disorder and upticks in financial problems that could push families into "[p]overty and financial uncertainty."
"The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse," the doctors wrote.
The doctors give examples of situations patient's are enduring as a result of the stay-at-home orders.
But these doctors point to others that are suffering, not from the economy or the virus, but simply from not being able to leave home. The doctors' letter lists a handful of patients by their initials and details their experiences.
"Patient E.S. is a mother with two children whose office job was reduced to part-time and whose husband was furloughed," the letter reads. "The father is drinking more, the mother is depressed and not managing her diabetes well, and the children are barely doing any schoolwork."
"Patient A.F. has chronic but previously stable health conditions," the letter continues. "Her elective hip replacement was delayed, which caused her to become nearly sedentary, resulting in a pulmonary embolism in April."
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