Sign the petition re: nurses and health care workers

Add your name to show your support for health care workers. If we run out of equipment, nurses like me will die.

Sign the petition telling the Trump administration to provide the equipment health care professionals need to save lives.

Dear MoveOn member,

My name is Donna. I'm a nurse in Alaska. Nurses and other health care professionals are on the front lines of fighting the COVID-19 outbreak and caring for our patients, but we're running out of personal protective equipment (PPE) in states across the nation.

We don't have the right kind of N95 respirator masks to keep us and you safe. We don't have enough ventilators to keep the very sickest patients alive. We don't have the ear or the attention of the president, who make promises and then walks away and does nothing.

This is scary. Our job is to treat and care for people, and we will not leave our patients behind. If we run out of equipment, health care providers and the patients we care for will die.

Help us by telling the Trump administration that we need its immediate action to use its authority under the Defense Production Act to save lives.

Health care workers have shown their commitment to patients and the public. We need the same level of commitment from the Trump administration, and we need it now. We urge you to honor the bravery of health care workers by implementing the recommendations listed below. The nation's health and our lives literally depend on it.

Let's be clear: If we get sick and if people die, it's because policies that start all the way at the top have failed us. We should have been producing the needed respirators, masks, and ventilators long before this. The Trump administration should have taken the outbreak seriously when it started three months ago.

And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keep lowering the guidelines for health care workers to be safe; the CDC just said that we can use bandanas as masks. The CDC is putting my life and the lives of other nurses at risk by telling us to use scarves rather than producing enough masks that will keep us safe. And it's not just respirators, masks, and ventilators we're running low on. Hospitals are reporting shortages of gowns, gloves, and other PPE that we need to keep ourselves safe as we care for the sick.

Add your name to demand proper protection and resources for health care workers.

Here's what we need right now:

• The administration must make the production of N95 respirators and other PPE a top priority.
  
  
• The President must use the Defense Production Act to direct industry to make ventilators for patients.
  
  
• The federal government has a stockpile of personal protective equipment, but has released less than 10 percent of the stockpile. We're still running low. The federal government must release more of it immediately to keep us safe.
  
  
• All healthcare workers should have immediate, free access to being tested to ensure that we are safe and not endangering non-infected patients.
  
  
• The federal government needs to stop watering down guidelines that keep us safe. The minimum standard should be N95 respirators. Telling us to use bandanas puts our lives at risk.

Trump has said he'll use the Defense Production Act to make masks and tests, after weeks of us pressuring him, but he has not said he'll use it to ensure there are enough ventilators to keep patients from dying. And he's still not releasing the stockpile of PPE that he has, which could fill the gap until enough N95 masks are made.

Help us by telling the administration that we need this now.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thank you.

–Donna Phillips and American Federation of Teachers

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