Amid the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, the Surgeon General recently called for hospitals to stop elective surgeries in order to conserve valuable (and possibly limited resources) for potential victims of the virus.  

Under this same call to action, I felt it was extremely important to bring up one particular elective surgery which is rampant in the United States - male circumcision.  

Male circumcision is extremely common in the US, but is fairly rare in all other developed countries, especially circumcising for non medical reasons.  While some US physicians claim circumcision reduces the risk of STD transmission and of penile cancer, yet the incidence of both STDs and penile cancer are higher in the US than in other developed nations such as Germany or the UK, where circumcision is rare.  Because there are no legitimate medical reasons to circumcise the majority of males born in the US, this is very clearly an elective surgery.

The surgeon general made arguments that elective surgeries place people at higher risk of Covid-19 contamination, as well as using up resources that might prove limited and invaluable if the virus sticks to its current rate of infection.  It also weakens the immune system of newborn males and has a high potential for infection or other complications (over 100 babies die from circumcisions every year in the US).  Best estimates show that several thousand circumcisions occur in the US every day. That is a significant amount of medical resources and personnel dedicated to an elective surgery.

I implore the Surgeon General to publicly recognize circumcision as a risky elective procedure, and make the same plea for hospitals, medical personnel, and pregnant women to opt out of this dangerous and unnecessary procedure.