President Donald Trump's Monday afternoon tweet—in which he announced that he would leave Walter Reed at 6:30 pm, dismissed the severity of pandemic, and touted "really great drugs"—elicited a flood of criticism from observers who said the president could be sending a deadly message after being afforded the kind of healthcare treatment the more than 210,000 Americans who died from Covid-19 were unable to access.
"Don't be afraid of Covid," tweeted Trump, who is infected with the virus and has been at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center since Friday night. "We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs."
The tweet comes a day after Trump, who, being 74 and overweight, is at higher risks from the virus, left the hospital to go on a sharply criticized drive-by of supporters outside Walter Reed in an apparent display of robust health.
"How many people will die because of this tweet?" progressive advocacy group Public Citizen wrote in response to Trump's tweet.
Indivisble co-executive director Leah Ghostberg similarly responded: "'Don't be afraid of Covid' is a disgustingly irresponsible message for anyone to send. That message, coming from THE PRESIDENT, is going to influence so many people and lead to so many more unnecessary deaths."
"This is dangerous and toxic," said MoveOn.
"Covid-19 and the Trump administration's failed response have killed more than 210,000 Americans," the group wrote, encouraging people to follow CDC recommendations to stop the spread of the virus and "vote Trump and the GOP out over the next 29 days."
Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University's Milken School of Public Health, reiterated her concerns that the true status of Trump's condition remains unknown, and wondered if the president will "abide by isolation guidelines and not further endanger others?"
Rebuffing Trump's downplaying of the virus, Wen added: "We SHOULD be afraid of #covid19. It has killed 209,000 Americans."
Though White House officials have not given clear a timeline of Trump's illness, it is known that he was given the steroid dexamethasone as well as an experimental antibody cocktail.
"I don't know who needs to hear this, but Trump had access to treatments that on one else in the country does," tweeted CBS journalist Weijia Jiang.
"If we all had the same access to the top-tier socialized medicine that the president does," added Public Citizen, "Covid would be a little less scary."
Trump's doctor, Sean Conley, said at a press conference Monday afternoon that the president "may not entirely be out of the woods yet," but noted that Trump "will be surrounded by world-class medical care 24/7."
"We all remain cautiously optimistic and on guard because we're in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early in the course," said Conley, "so we're looking to this weekend."
Ahead of the president's Twitter announcement, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) put the backdrop in stark terms.
"Over 30 million were uninsured at the start of 2020," wrote Khanna, and "at least 5.4 million lost their employer-based health insurance during Covid."
"Today, I'm thinking about all those who couldn't afford the care they needed during this pandemic," he tweeted.
This article originally appeared on Common Dreams. You can read it here.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.