March 11th marks two years since the official beginning of the pandemic - a global disaster that has and continues to result in tragedy, death, pain, and suffering for so many across the world. Too much of this has been preventable. Our leaders have time and time again placed profit over our lives, and two years later, this reality couldn’t be more obvious. More people are getting sick every day. Students are walking out of school because they’re scared of being exposed to COVID. Health care workers are sounding the alarm on how overwhelmed and under-resourced they are. People grieving loved ones, as well as many experiencing debilitating lasting impacts from Long COVID, see their suffering ignored and minimized. If we don't take immediate and urgent action to share the vaccine globally, it will take years for many to even get their first shot. In that time, people across the world will be left to die, and the pandemic will continue–for everyone.

But what has the White House and Biden administration chosen to do about these realities? They’ve chosen to put Jeffrey Zients –a businessman with ties to pharmaceutical companies, NOT a public health expert– at the helm of the national COVID response coordination. And now– they are seriously considering promoting him to White House Chief of Staff - a powerful position that would allow his decision-making to cause even more harm.

In the one year in his role, Zients has dissuaded governors from issuing mask mandates during the current COVID-19 surge. He was at the helm when the White House killed its own OSHA regulation that would have provided paid quarantine and isolation for most US workers. Zients has failed to address massive shortages of affordable rapid tests and KN95s. And he has been at the lead through the White House’s insufficient approach towards addressing inequitable vaccine access globally. Rather than pushing companies to share vaccine technology to distribute production in low and middle income countries, save human lives, and prevent the emergence and spread of variants, he has prioritized corporate handouts and donations. These policies have directly led to the current Omicron surge and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and infections, in the US and around the world.

That’s why today we are writing with one simple call: if the White House is serious about ending the pandemic, they will not consider promoting Jeffrey Zients - failing White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator to a higher position.

We are furious. We are devastated. We are exhausted from two years of being placed in an impossible, terrifying situation. And we are heartbroken: from being sick, from being scared, from saying goodbye to loved ones over zoom funerals, from being treated like our lives and health are expendable, and from knowing that so much of this pandemic’s devastation has been preventable.

It’s time to expose the truth about Jeffrey Zients and stop his decisions from gaining a more powerful platform. Sign this petition if you agree - we need public health experts, not a businessman, handling the White House pandemic response.