GASTONIA, N.C. (FOX 46 CHARLOTTE) – Dozens of North Carolina physicians and clinicians recently submitted a letter to President Trump’s campaign, urging the President to cancel all campaign rallies to preserve and protect public health.

Despite the physicians’ plea, Trump held his Greenville rally last week on Oct. 15, during which the state’s social-distancing and mask guidelines went largely unfollowed.

In Gaston County, where Trump is holding his rally on Wednesday, COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to increase.

President Trump’s rally, with an estimated attendance of 15,000 people, is set to take place at Gastonia Municipal Airport at 7 p.m EST on Wednesday, Oct. 21.

Read the full letter blow:

Dear Donald J. Trump for President campaign:

As physicians and medical professionals, we are extremely concerned about President Trump’s decision to hold a campaign rally at the Pitt-Greenville Airport in Greenville on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 1 p.m. We are concerned about the rally itself, as well as the public statements and misinformation shared by President Trump.

We believe the rallies, and the rhetoric from President Trump, increase risks to people’s health and safety.

Below are the examples of these dangerous statements and actions from just the past week:

  • After leaving Walter Reed Medical Center on Oct. 5, President Trump claimed he was “immune” following treatment for COVID-19. He later tweeted “I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it” — a statement Twitter had to take down because the president spread what Twitter called “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
  •  On Monday, Oct. 12, he resumed campaigning in Florida, where more than 15,000 people have died from COVID-19, 736,000 individuals have been sickened and the positivity rate is 13.5 percent. 
  •  Last week, he held a campaign rally in Iowa, which is seeing record-high hospitalizations and a positivity rate of 9.5 percent over the past two weeks. Public health experts say communities can reopen safely when the positivity rate is below 5 percent.
  •  President Trump called experimental antiviral drugs he received “cures” in a Twitter video and falsely said that the therapy had been authorized, with hundreds of thousands of doses ready for use. 

For these reasons, in the interest of public health and safety, we ask Trump to cancel his rally in North Carolina on Thursday, Oct. 15. If the President does not cancel his potential superspreader event, we urge people to avoid attending the rally.

The president’s visit comes as COVID-19 hospitalizations are reaching their highest point in North Carolina since mid-August.

The rally also comes just days after President Trump left a hospital after being treated for COVID-19  — all the while continuing to downplay the disease and spread medically inaccurate information.

COVID-19 is a highly infectious, deadly disease that can infect anyone, even the president, as we’ve seen.

The best precaution people can take is to continue to take the virus seriously and to practice preventative measures that can reduce the likelihood of transmission. But President Trump’s rallies increase the risk of COVID-19 person-to-person infections, and they give a false impression that COVID-19 is no longer with us. 

When nearly 1,000 Americans continuing to die every day from COVID-19, the data shows this pandemic is still with us. COVID-19 has not gone away no matter how much President Trump wants people to believe.

We can keep each other safer and truly turn the corner by wearing a mask, washing your hands, and avoiding large crowds. That means choosing to stay home and stay safe. No presidential candidate should be holding large, in-person events that ignore proper social distancing guidelines, especially if the candidate encourages behavior that threatens the health of our patients.

Sincerely,

Onyinyechi Agbara, MD, Radiology (Pinehurst, NC)

John Alley, MD, Radiology (Raleigh, NC)

Kathryn Andolsek, MD MPH, Family Medicine (Durham, NC)

Rachel Banks, MD, Family Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Summer Barlow, MD, Family (Asheville, NC)

George Bohmfalk, MD, Neurosurgery (Charlotte, NC)

Sarah Carlson, MD, Family Medicine (Mooresville, NC)

Lou Ann Crume, MD, Psychiatrist (Chapel Hill, NC)

Andrea DeSantis, DO, Family Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Megan Dunn, RN, BSN, Pediatrics (Charlotte, NC)

Neville Eclov, Medical Physicist, Radiation Oncology (Cary, NC)

Michael Ferguson, MD, ENT (Raleigh, NC)

Denise Finck-Rothman, MD, Family Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Elizabeth Fitzgerald, MD, Pediatrics (Chapel Hill, NC)

Paul Gilbert, MD, Orthopaedic Surgery (Charlotte, NC)

Alicia Gonzalez, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Psychiatry (Durham, NC)

Wayne Hale, MD, Family Medicine/Geriatrics (Greensboro, NC)

Linda Hammock, LCAS, LCMHC, Addiction (Chapel Hill, NC)

Neva Howard, MD, Pediatric Emergency Medicine (Durham, NC)

Toan Huynh, MD, Surgery (Charlotte, NC)

Jonathan Kotch, MD, Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine (Chapel Hill, NC)

Dorothy Linster, MD, Obstetrics/Gynecology (Raleigh, NC)

Aimee Lischke, MD, Family Medicine (Kernersville, NC)

Frank Lorch, MD, PM&R (Charlotte, NC)

Kimmery Martin, MD, Emergency Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Albert Meyer, MD, Family Medicine (Topsail Beach, NC)

Kavita Nanda, MD, Obstetrics and gynecology (Cary, NC)

Shiny Narahari, MD, Hospitalist (Raleigh, NC)

Rosa Padilla, RDH, BS, Dental (Mc Leansville, NC)

Patricia Rieser, RN, FNP, Family Practice (Durham, NC)

Gabriela Rivera-Camacho, MD, Emergency Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Jessica Schorr Saxe, MD, Family Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Laura Seth, MD, Internal Medicine (Charlotte, NC)

Dimple Shah, RN, Medsurg (Matthews, NC)

Lauren Sokolsky, MD, Emergency Medicine (Chapel Hill, NC)

Jason Sonnenschein, PA-C, Hospitalist (Carrboro, NC)

Margaret Sparks, MD, Dermatologist (Boone, NC)

Monica Stricklin, RN, Case Management (Kernersville, NC)

Sarah Yousuff, MD, Anesthesiology (Charlotte, NC)

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