Trump Says Doctors and Nurses Dying to Save Covid-19 Patients is 'Beautiful'. Erm, What?

We wouldn't have thought that the US President has a limited vocabulary. Or does he? At a press briefing, US President Donald Trump said that nurses and healthcare workers sacrificing their lives to fight the Covid-19 pandemic is a "beautiful thing to see". Yes, 'beautiful'.

The video which has now gone viral on social media shows Trump saying, "[Doctors and nurses] are running into death just like soldiers run into bullets ... it’s a beautiful thing to see.”

We hate to break it to you, but there is nothing beautiful about that.

Globally, millions of healthcare workers are putting their own lives on the line to treat coronavirus patients, all the while battling stigma and discrimination at the same time, not to be called heroes but simply because it is their job. Trump's speech comes at a time when the United States is reportedly facing a massive shortage of PPE kits and other protective gear which healthcare workers require if they're going to fight from the frontlines.

A data report by Time showed that as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US increases at an alarming rate, hospitals are getting overcrowded while the healthcare workers are practically running out of everything. No PPE kits, no eye shields, no gowns. Another report published by Al Jazeera showed that frontline workers in the US were literally begging for PPE kits and it is the shortage of protective gear which is exposing doctors and nurses to the virus causing them to fall sick and eventually die from Covid-19. In the report, one of the nurses even said that their death was inevitable and this crisis had taught them one thing - that their lives are expendable.

Amid all of this, Trump's comment that nurses and doctors dying is "beautiful" is ill-timed and insensitive. No doctor or nurse wants to die or give up their lives fighting the virus. But as the government fails to provide adequate gear, they are left with no choice. To sum it up in one line, nurses and doctors shouldn't have to "risk their lives" to save patients.