Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Rainy_D]

There is nothing that prevented Cuomo from pushing for the purchase of additional ventilators.  He kicked the can down the road as sooo many do and now we get to hear him whine about how USA taxpayers should fund his states shortcomings.  Not just Cuomo of course, there is the entire State of New York elected officials  who had access to this very document and other reports regarding the potential for human catastrophe, who failed to provide for their constituents. 

New York made a plan and now do not like that they have to live with the choice the state made.  They all signed off on this smaller version of 'death panels' should a pandemic break out.

Not surprising.  It's the nature of politicians of all parties to put off hard planning and spending for potential problems when it's so easy to spend money for immediate politically-rewarding satisfactions, many of which may be serious needs but not all.  I blame the feds mainly as they have the most monopoly money to throw around and are most sadistically stupid managing it.

Blame the Feds for what?   This is a state issue that, when drilled down, is an individual health care entity failure .  Not only do they [NY] have an issue with ventilators, there is a basic lack of planning for needed general supplies such as gloves, masks, etc. when the pandemic issue was studied.  Where are the stock piles from NY Nat. Guard?  Where did anyone in NY take action to mandate that hospitals have enough gloves/masks to cover a flu season pandemic?

Feds have 50 states to allocate limited resources too.  Spend the resources where they will do the most good, which does not seem to be New York (at this time).

The mayor and Mr. Cuomo had resisted closing the city’s schools even as other states shuttered their public schools, and urban school districts, like Los Angeles and Seattle, did the same.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/nyreg...losed.html

There ya go ^ ^ ^ ^ , another gov entity that does not take its own advice and power whines to the feds when things go bad.  Maybe the voters of NY will wake up to the source of their problems and actual do something about it.

-- 3M - more than 500,000 respirators are on the way from our South Dakota plant to two of the more critically impacted areas, New York and Seattle, with arrivals expected starting tomorrow (3/25) ... We [3M] are also ready to expedite additional shipments across the country.

-- Medtronic, the medical device make has pledged to double its output of mechanical ventilators: life-saving devices for critically-ill COVID-19 patients who suffer respiratory issues and need help breathing. 

-- In an interview Saturday, spokesman Ben Petok said the company [Medtronic] has already upped production by 40 percent since the beginning of the year, raising its weekly output to several hundred ventilators per week.

A woman I work with retired out of Medtronic and they contacted her 3 weeks ago to see if she was willing to come back for ventilator production. 

The same woman just quit a different job because they were manufacturing devices without having properly trained the people in quality control that must be in place for medical devices.  Oh, don't worry... the feds just changed a bunch of laws to increase the amount of devices being shipped to health care workers.

Trump was right to resist forcing companies to manufacture products they are not geared to produce.