'It was an act of principle': The Covid doctor who quit over Cummings

Dr Dominic Pimenta resigned from his cardiology post after Boris Johnson ’s chief advisor made his controversial car journey. Was it the right decision?On 24 May, a couple of days after it was revealed thatDominic Cummings had travelled to Durham during the lockdown, a British cardiologist, Dr Dominic Pimenta,published a tweet in which he threatened to resign if Cummings did not. For Pimenta, news of Cummings ’s trip had landed like a blow. In March, he had been drafted on to a Covid-19 intensive care unit, where he had witnessed suffering and death, struggle and recovery: “This sheer volume of human capacity that had been devoted to trying to save lives.” His tweet came at the end of a terrible we ekend of intensive care shifts, during which he had watched patients die, their loved ones absent, and he had given everything of himself and seen colleagues do the same. And nowthis? “If we are going to be asked to risk our lives,” he wrote later, “the least we can expect is to be treated like people.”Pimenta ’s tweet was widely shared. By the following morning he’d become a national news story, and he was invited by the media to share more of what he wanted to say: how he hoped that by making a stand he might highlight the recent sacrifices of healthcare workers while reassuring the public that thei r own sacrifices had not been in vain, that the lockdown was saving lives, that they must maintain faith in it.Catherine Calderwood, Scotland ’s former chief med...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Dominic Cummings Coronavirus outbreak NHS Science Infectious diseases World news Health Society Medical research Source Type: news