Aaron Mishler is an American nurse who served as an Ebola responder in West Africa between 2014 and 2015. At some point, while writing a compelling blog post reflecting on his experience, he wrote a line that has resonated among health care providers over the past year: “There is no emergency in a pandemic.” Mishler’s overarching point was a good one: if health care providers do not use proper PPE in high-risk situations, we risk increased harm to both ourselves and to the populations that we try to serve. Nonetheless, the notion of, “no emergency in a pandemic”—a phrase now being uncritically referenced in peer-reviewed publications, by health care workers on social media, and in the halls of the hospitals I work in—is manifestly inaccurate and potentially erodes our core ethical commitments as physicians.