As an ER doc who's spent the last year of my life trying to stop a deadly virus from killing my neighbors, 6 words in @joebiden's speech lifted me up for the 1st time in months: "I Will Always Level With You.”
Here's why that's so meaningful to me & more importantly, our nation:

As the next 4-6 months unfold, a herculean effort will be needed from the government in the midst of a pandemic & millions of Americans without health care. There's so much we don't know. But it matters that we can *trust* our government to do their best & shoot straight with us.

We must convince Americans that wearing masks & getting the vaccine will save lives. That requires trust in government. And we must convince Congress that massive investment in American people, small businesses & state/local governments is needed to get us through this year.

We must also increase our capacity for testing & invest in a public health army to trace contacts of cases to slow the spread.
But the outcome of these efforts is precariously uncertain. And here's where trust really matters...

We don’t know that the Biden administration can scale testing to the level needed given the high number of infections diagnosed daily. But we *trust* that he & his team will put forth every effort to achieve this goal.

We don’t know if it's even *possible* to trace contacts of cases, even with a huge increase in the public health workforce. (With the current load of cases in so many parts of the country, there may not be enough people to carry out the work). But we trust Biden’s team will try.

We know that getting 90+ percent of Americans to consistently wear masks & keep their distance from one another might be impossible. But as evidenced by protocols enacted for the inauguration, we know that this President will model good behavior & demand it of those around him.

The rollout of vaccines has fallen woefully short of initial projections, and acceptance is far from ubiquitous. But we know @joebiden has charged his team with using every lever of government to hit the goal of 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine in the first 100 days.

And the promise of affordable healthcare for all has been delayed far too long. Among other things, we can shore up the ACA, boost Medicaid expansion, pursue racial justice in healthcare & make more people eligible for Medicare, so more Americans move closer to this promise.

The new administration may well fall short on some of its priorities. The mess it has inherited is almost unimaginable.
But what those critical six words tell me is that we, the American people for whom @joebiden works, can count on him to level with us. And that is uplifting.