Happy 244th Birthday, America!

I do hope you get some time to enjoy the holiday this year, but I think we all know that it's

going to feel very different as well.

Truth is, I hope we'll be having a very different conversation around your birthday.

One full of celebrations and excitement about the progress we've been making at eradicating

this disease.

Full of barbecues and beaches.

Instead, you've been dealing with this illness for months now, and I know it hasn't been easy.

I thought maybe we'd be talking about coming out the other side of this curve.

Instead, there's a new curve, and it's going upward.

But as doctors, we have to continuously balance hope and honesty.

And honesty always has to lead the way.

That doesn't mean I'm not hopeful for you, America, and I want you to be hopeful as well.

But our greatest hope comes with transparency, full and clear.

So today, I wanted to talk to you as a doctor, would talk to a patient.

Lately, I've had a real convergence of my two lives as doctor and journalist.

Maybe it's because the way that I trained and studied.

But I've really been looking at the United States as a patient, a single human body that

is infected.

So the conversation we need to have is one that I'd hope to avoid and expect it to be

different at this time.

I have to now tell the patient that the disease is spreading.

...