Trump killed my neighbor. He has killed countless neighbors.

My neighbor died of COVID last night after two weeks on a ventilator. She and her husband hosted a Thanksgiving gathering, and two weeks later they had COVID. Two weeks after that, she went into the hospital and he began to recover.

Trump publicly downplayed COVID-19 while privately telling Bob Woodward — on tape — that it was lethal. He questioned and maligned wearing masks, creating reason and room to turn an effective method of fighting COVID into a partisan controversy. He portrayed stay-at-home orders as tyranny, leading many citizens to defy them and leaders to neglect them.

If not for Trump, the messaging about COVID would’ve been unified. Sustained coherent messaging is crucial for creating social change, like universal social distancing and masking. If not for Trump, COVID wouldn’t have become so awful, and my neighbor and so many others might be alive.