Vivek Murthy

And in moments like this, in pandemic responses, public trust is everything.

When you lose public trust, that's when you start to lose the entire effort.

Because then even when you're telling people the right thing to do,

They're not going to do it because they're not sure you're being level with them.

That doesn't mean that you can never screw up because trust me, in every outbreak response, something goes wrong.

Something gets broken.

It happens in Democratic administrations, Republican administrations.

And that's why you have to approach these pandemics with humility.

But.

The way that you deal with those stumbles is to be upfront and honest with people and to really deliver on what you say you're going to get them.

And right now I worry that many of our frontline workers don't trust necessarily that the government's going to be there for them in the way they need because they've seen some shortcomings in the past.

And I think we've got to repair that trust by delivering.

on what they need in terms of PPE testing, mental health services, and other support.

And because it's not just important for making this pandemic response work, but also it's going to be critical for future response efforts.

Just let me note this because it's critical.

I think we're so focused on what's to come in terms of COVID-19 related issues.

There's this whole surge of non-COVID-19 related care that's going to start to flow right back into our healthcare system.

It hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention.

But I'm worried about that non-COVID-19 surge.

All of the elective, non-essential procedures that were deferred yesterday will become urgent tomorrow, right?