Obama urges Americans to ‘model’ behavior on health professionals

Former President Obama thanked health-care professionals for fighting on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak, and urged Americans to follow their behavior. 

“We owe a profound debt of gratitude to all our health professionals and everybody who’ll be on the front lines of this pandemic for a long while,” Obama tweeted Tuesday. 

“They’re giving everything. May we all model our own behavior on their selflessness and sacrifice as we help each other through this,” he added. 

We owe a profound debt of gratitude to all our health professionals and everybody who’ll be on the front lines of this pandemic for a long while. They’re giving everything. May we all model our own behavior on their selflessness and sacrifice as we help each other through this. https://t.co/F3tsJTqd4c

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 17, 2020

Obama’s tweet was in response to a thread by Rachel Patzer, an epidemiologist at Emory University, who shared her family’s experience making the decision to isolate her husband, an emergency doctor treating coronavirus patients, in their home garage. 

Patzer said she has a three week old newborn and two young kids at home. 

“It pains me to wonder how many weeks will go by that he won’t get to hold our new baby or see our older kids. This is one example of the sacrifice that healthcare workers are making for our communities,” she wrote. 

My spouse is a physician in the emergency dept, and is actively treating #coronavirus patients. We just made the difficult decision for him to isolate & move into our garage apartment for the foreseeable future as he continues to treat patients. (1/5)

— Rachel Patzer, PhD (@RachelPatzerPhD) March 17, 2020

“Please, take this #pandemic seriously. I hope the projections of infections and serious cases are incorrect. If not, our healthcare system will be overloaded,” Patzer added. “And already we are seeing the strain. Please thank a healthcare worker for what they are doing and sacrificing.”

There are more than 5,890 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

As the global pandemic presses on, healthcare professionals have wanted against a lack of resources in hospitals, including a lack of protective masks for healthcare workers treating infected patients.