Silence=Death Redux: Infectious Diseases, Public Health, and the Imperative to Resist.

Abstract

The field of infectious diseases is at a perilous moment in our history, with the United States executive branch of government and congressional enablers contemptuous toward truth, public health, and social justice, implementing regressive policies that promise to undo decades of scientific and social progress and directly threaten the lives of individuals from vulnerable communities that we serve around the world. In this perspective, we recount the early executive actions that impact every aspect of the field infectious diseases. Inspired by LGBTQ+ community activists and early human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) clinicians who overcame hostile political forces, we implore the infectious diseases community to urgently and forcefully defend the people for whom we care, the public health institutions on which we rely, and the principles in which we believe.