<新英格兰医学杂志>社论：
谴责特朗普抗疫表现;
吁选民踢走现届政府
特朗普如今已成为一个被国际权威医学杂志评为“犯下许多错误，不仅愚蠢而且鲁莾”的美国总统。美国人民不应该让他们留任，令更多的美国人失去生命。
<维基百科>介绍：<新英格兰医学杂志>（英文：The New England Journal of Medicine；简称 NEJM）是由美国麻省医学协会所出版的同行评审性质之医学期刊。它是一份目前全世界最受欢迎及广受阅读的同侪审阅性质之综合性医学期刊。它与另外三份国际医学期刊<柳叶刀>（The Lancet）、<美国医学会杂志>（Journal of the American Medical Association）、<英国医学杂志>（British Medical Journal）是一般认为的“国际四大医学期刊”。
本文是<星岛日报>2020年10月8日的报道（上图说明与文内小标题为<人民之友>编者所加——
在国际学术界享负盛名的《新英格兰医学杂志》作出一项史无前例的行动，周三刊登一篇由一批编辑联署的社论，谴责美国总统特朗普的政府应对新冠肺炎疫症的表现，并公开呼吁美国选民在即将举行的全国大选中，投票赶走现时掌权的政府领导层。
不应让他们留任而令更多美国人丢命
撰写这篇社论的《新英格兰医学杂志》总编辑鲁宾（Eric Rubin）说：“我们甚少刊登由所有编辑签署的社论。”这篇社论在8月开始起草，内容详细讲述美国的新冠肺炎确诊数字和死亡人数如何跃升至全球榜首。根据约翰•霍普金斯大学提供的最新数据，全美至今累计有754.6万多宗确诊个案，21.1万多人病殁，都是稳佔全球第1位。社论指出：“这场危机考验领导层。没有良好的方案去对付这种新的病原体。各国在决定如何应对时，被迫作出艰难的选择。在美国，我们的领袖们在这场考验中失败了。他们面对危机，把它变成悲剧。”
该杂志没有明确表态在下月举行的大选中支持哪一位候选人，但社论指出：“若是其他人这样子糟蹋生命和金钱，都会受到法律制裁。我们的领袖们在很大程度上声称对他们的行动享有豁免权，但在这次选举中，我们有能力作出判断。在应对我们这个时代最大的公共衞生危机时，我们现任的政治领导人已经证明他们无能。我们不应该让他们留任，令再多数以千计的美国人失去生命。”
杂志创刊以来首次发表有关选举社论
《新英格兰医学杂志》于1812年创刊，过往只试过4次由众编辑联署及发表社论，其中一次是2014年讲述避孕问题，另一次是哀悼一位离世的总编辑。鲁宾指出：“我们从来未发表过有关选举的社论，原因是我们不是一本政治刊物，而且我不认为我们希望成为一本政治刊物。不过，现在的问题是关乎到事实，而不是意见。 犯下的许多错误，不仅愚蠢而且鲁莾。我想，我们希望人们知道真相，而不仅仅是意见。”#
（《新英格兰医学杂志》社论英文全文刊于以下CNN报道之后，有兴趣者，敬请阅读）
CNN news:
Prestigious American Medical Journal (NEJM) calls for US leadership to be voted out over Covid-19 failure
By Jacqueline Howard，CNN
Updated 0246 GMT (1046 HKT) October 8, 2020
(CNN)In an unprecedented move, the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday published an editorial written by its editors condemning the Trump administration for its response to the Covid-19 pandemic -- and calling for the current leadership in the United States to be voted out of office.
"We rarely publish editorials signed by all the editors," said Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the medical journal and an author of the new editorial.
The editorial, which Rubin said was drafted in August, details how the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths. So far, more than 7.5 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and more than 200,000 people have died of the disease.
"This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy," the editorial says.
It does not endorse a candidate, but offers a scathing critique of the Trump administration's leadership during the pandemic.
"Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment," the editorial says. "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. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."
The New England Journal of Medicine began publishing in 1812. There have been only four previous editorials collectively signed by its editors in the recent past: one in 2014 about contraception; an obituary that same year for a former editor-in-chief; an editorial that year about standard-of-care research and an editorial in 2019 about abortion.
First endorsement for president in publication's 175-year history
"The reason we've never published an editorial about elections is we're not a political journal and I don't think that we want to be a political journal -- but the issue here is around fact, not around opinion. There have been many mistakes made that were not only foolish but reckless and I think we want people to realize that there are truths here, not just opinions," Rubin said.
"For example, masks work. Social distancing works. Quarantine and isolation work. They're not opinions. Deciding not to use them is maybe a political decision but trying to suggest that they're not real is imaginary and dangerous," he said. "We don't have the right leaders for this epidemic. I think we need better leadership."
The New England Journal of Medicine is not the only medical or scientific publication to take a political stance amid the pandemic and ahead of this November's presidential election.
In September, the magazine Scientific American announced it was endorsing former vice president and Democratic candidate Joe Biden over President Trump, who it criticized for dismissing science. That announcement marked the publication's first endorsement of a presidential candidate in its 175-year history.
<新英格兰医学杂志>社论英文全文：
The full text of this editorial at NEJM.org.：
Dying in a Leadership Vacuum
The Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.
The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,1 the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.
We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude.
Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.2 Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.
Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust.
The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.
The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. 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. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized,3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.
Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.
Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. 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. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.
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