If we stay divided, we’ll never defeat COVID

As President Biden struggles to find a COVID message that resonates with a larger percentage of the public, he should take a page from Martin Luther King Jr., who promoted inclusivity in one of the greatest speeches of all time.

In his “I Have a Dream” address, Dr. King declared that “when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last.’ ”

Inclusivity must include the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated, the boosted as well as the unboosted, those who have recovered from COVID as well as those who have never had it, and those who think they have had it but can’t prove it. 

As a physician, I take care of all patients, no matter their vaccine status. In the same vein, the president needs to stop calling this a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” — not only does this statement deepen our divisions, but the omicron variant is spreading among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike.

Don’t get me wrong: A fully vaccinated and boosted patient is much less likely to end up in a hospital, where our health care heroes are already overwhelmed. But this reality is true for someone who has recently recovered from COVID as well: The vaccine also clearly decreases your risk of the problematic symptoms of “Long COVID,” including cognitive difficulties and lung or heart problems — another big reason that everyone who is eligible for the vaccine should take it. 

Yet widespread mandates and mockery have no place in the current climate, in which prolonged restrictions and closures lasting for many months have led to tremendous psychological and economic damage.

The president needs to take a card from Dr. King’s oratorical deck and recognize that we are all in this together. The virus doesn’t differentiate, it can infect all of us. We must turn our attention to the rest of the world, where many underdeveloped regions are vastly under-vaccinated and could easily spin out new variants, especially among immuno-compromised people who can’t properly fight off the virus. We can boost ourselves all we want, but trillions of copies of the virus in poorly vaccinated regions will continue to mutate and develop variants that may be rapidly transmissible, giving them a survival advantage, as in the case with omicron. 

This virus is a formidable foe no matter what we do to detect, prevent or treat it. We need to develop an inclusive strategy based on kindness, compassion and education. Scolding, belittling or marginalizing is not effective or fair, otherwise I would never treat a smoker with emphysema, an alcoholic, or someone who abuses drugs. All of those are self-inflicted diseases that put a strain on our health care system, and yet I treat them all the same — and so does every physician and health care practitioner I know. 

This virus has defied expectations and predictions, and has humbled us all. We need to act like it, from the president of the United States on down, by admitting our errors and adjusting our approach, whether it involves masks, tests, treatments, vaccines, schools or lockdown and closure strategies.

We need the cooperation of everyone in the world to bring us to a better place, and we need to work together to reach our goal of defeating COVID.

Marc Siegel, M.D., is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is a Fox News medical correspondent and author of the new book, “COVID; the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science.”