Please, Mr. President. Do your job to federalize response to COVID-19.

Dear Mr. President,

I will be the first to admit that I have been unenthusiastic about your presidency, which I believed would further the political divisiveness in this nation, unnecessarily attack immigrants and give tax handouts to wealthy corporations. So far, those fears have been fully realized and each day I have hoped that you would live out the promise you made to America the night you were elected, which is to be the President for all Americans. Instead, you have spent the past three years deflecting, blaming the media and out right proclaiming that the nation’s problems were not your fault.

Well Mr. President, I have a message for you: the buck stops with you, sir. And our country’s future rests in your hands. We need you to listen to scientists and establish a federal plan to combat COVID-19 or the ramifications will live with us for decades.

Mr. President, you have the power to use the platform of the executive to calm the nation and to deliver a stream-lined approach based on science, which is an approach that your citizens want and crave. It will boost your approval rating and give us the time recommended by the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control to truly flatten the curve to avoid bringing our health care system to the brink of collapse.

A science-based plan will suppress the negative impression and fact that you have ignored many recommendations given to you by top health officials in the past few weeks and days. And, Mr. President, your citizens need reassurance from our top official.

A science-based plan needs to start with a federal stay-at-home policy. We cannot continue allowing New Orleans, LA, for example, to be completely shut down while citizens in Jackson, MS are being encouraged to have dinner in public restaurants by their unwilling governor while citizens carrying the disease travel back and forth between the two states undetected. If we want to truly stop the spread of this virus, I implore you to listen to health officials and standardize the expectations of virus protocol.

Health officials have also indicated a need for more data on the disease, which can be accomplished by mass-testing the population, which is having success in other nations like South Korea. We need to figure out where the disease exists and who potentially has already had it if we ever want to start phasing the economy back into some resemblance of a normal reality.

Lastly, Mr. President, governors have been crying out for federal support with health supplies. Although you have claimed that you have invoked the Defense Production Act, there is little evidence of that and you have claimed that the country does not need it because private corporations are willingly cooperating. Earlier this week, you were quoted by comparing the DPA to the nationalization of industry in socialist countries such as Venezuela. This is a false and inaccurate comparison because private companies would receive contracts to be paid for their services and remain just that: private. States cannot continue to go on the open market to out-bid each other for supplies that are in short supply; they need federal support. Health officials have provided your administration with projected needs, it is your job as the executive to assist the states when they need it.

So please, Mr. President, do your job. Listen to the experts. Your legacy as a President and our immediate future as a nation are deeply connected to one another. The sooner you do your job, the sooner the nation can get back to some sense of normalcy.

Annalee Abell is a high school social studies teacher in Louisville who grew up in Lexington.

This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 11:41 AM.