US Hospitals say feds are seizing masks and other coronavirus supplies
latimes.com
latimes.com
The Feds seized 3M masks that Massachusetts purchased. The governor found a supplier to get more masks and had the Patriots (football team) fly their jet to China to pick them up to avoid seizure.
Massachusetts has transported 300,000 masks from that mission to NYC under state police escort: https://www.masslive.com/patriots/2020/04/coronavirus-respon...
This seems incredibly negligent at best. If they're afraid of being accused of being partial, transparency about the rules and procedures are essential. They way they handle it now will only stoke the fire of mistrust and conspiracy theories. How can a government be this inept?
Over the last few years, one of the things that has bothered me the most is that the strategy of saying "fake news" or "bad journalist" (for males) or "nasty question" (for women) and proceeding full steam ahead is proving to be remarkably effective. There is zero accountability.
Not my own insight BTW. Got it from this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1247732044903350272
And these two strategies play off each other very well. More scandals (legitimate and not) make each one less significant, which reduces the cost of being involved in a scandal, which...
This rings true.
Even for decision makers up and down the hierarchy. Most of the time people, even responsible people with good intent, have no clue what the right move is. But they have to make moves for all kinds of reasons. And problems compound.
It takes time for mistakes to surface and unwind things. So give it time.
And remember is not a dual choice between malice and good. The administration could simply be incompetent, obsessed with control, and afraid to look weak by having states take decisions on their own.
And they could have a bigger picture of happenings that you or I do not.
True, but also true for irresponsible people with malicious intent, and those benefit massively from confusion and opacity.
Of course, it's also possible that government already is broken, they did win, and now they are reaping the rewards of corruption. I tend to think this is pretty likely.
You should only vote if are truly and in favour of and see the good reasoning of someone’s ideas and who has shown a good track record. Voting out of emotion to stick it to the other team is like stabbing yourself with a dagger.
> Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
If you think a given politician is bad, that your candidate is better, and you lose, then that's just how it is. Nobody was supposed to vote for you. If you align with a political party, then was the party's job to pick a candidate that was at least likeable. If they lose, it's because someone found the other party more appealing for some reason. (This, of course, ignores vote rigging, voter intimidation, and other methods of actively suppressing/discarding votes)
There are politicians out there you'd think are absolute demons based off internet comments and they only won because of so-called "protest votes", but going outside and talking to people, it's surprising how much support they have. It becomes pretty clear why they won.
There has been American ruling for a long time, certainly the period we might now call the good times. IE, once they did an adequate job. If there's a cynical nihilism among the voters, the willingness of the broad political class to provoke this feeling has to get a lot of blame.
* Implement PR-STV voting * Abolish the electoral college
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
Imagine voting in order of preference and having it count.
PR-STV is damn near magical. It means you can vote for the person you _really want_ (so your super lefty communist or your right-wing neonazi, if that's your jam) but ALSO say "well if they don't win I want someone who's at least basically competent" - and your vote is allocated in the most effective manner. In some cases even if your #1 _does_ win the surplus can go to the next candidate, useful in elections where there's more than one winner (county councils, etc.)
Imgine if the GOP primary had been one person saying "Well I like Kasich, Rubio, Jeb" and the other had been "Well I like Jeb, Rubio, Kasich" in that order - Rubio wins. Instead we get the ones who pay any attention splitting as above and the masses who do stuff besides follow politics voting for Trump.
But it gets better! This affects behaviour. Right now, the republicans know there isn't a chance in hell of getting my vote so they don't even try. If they knew they _might_ get a 3rd or 4th preference out of me, they might at least go for it. I can imagine, say, voting Sanders->Biden->Hypothetical Lincoln Chafee or John McCain or whatever. I'm not a huge fan of either of my lower preferences, but they seem(ed) like decent people with whom my differences are a matter of policy, and would be VASTLY preferable to what we have now.
There’s an underlying hope that the US is a great nation, or could display the characteristics of one at least. The lack of unity displayed between the states and federal government leaves me less convinced of this.
My entire life I’ve been told America was great, but all I’ve seen is sand turned to glassy mirrors inside explosive crucibles. It is easy to hate our reflection, and even harder to realise we don’t seem willing to change it.
Right now however Americans are mostly voting for candidates that pursue policies that half of Americans will agree strongly with and half will disagree strongly with.
Moving the locus of policy making away from Washington DC and towards state legislatures would be a good thing since the policies would largely impact populations where the overwhelming majority agrees with the policies.
To add to the initial commentary, when the state governments and federal government are fighting each other, it shows a lack of unity. I’m not asking for a hegemonic unity where we all think the similar things for it to be enacted nationally, but instead for us to just have higher guiding principles that can align a nation in common action, politics irrespective.
South Korea and China seem to be doing well but if they don't achieve herd immunity, and other states do, they might end up prolonging their pain significantly. Although they'll probably be better off because they'll have time to prepare and benefit from medical advances.
It's hard to judge while we're in the middle of this. The demographics and cultural habits probably play a big role. The reports generated after this is all over will tell us who did what well. I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally.
I think if community spread had started as early as in the U.S. as those countries I think we'd be in a much worse spot than many of them.
The situation looks worse to me.
What matters is numbers, not how things "look".
New York has a population of 20 million and it currently has a number of dead comparable to the UK with a population of 67 million, for example. New Jersey seems to fare worse than Switzerland with a comparable population, for another example.
There are so many variables involved that it's hard to know how to rationally compare different regions. How much is demographics, population density, and other variables vs competence.
On the other hand, it is possible to say if they seem to be doing worse.
Most of the threads comparing death across countries don't say how each of those countries is counting the deaths.
Both total cases and total deaths are higher than US. Total deaths is 4x worse. What numbers are you looking at?
Give it a week and see how close the US is to overtaking Europe.
The US response has been utterly terrible. For a government that spends far more per person on healthcare it's absolutely shocking. This isn't including private/insurance payments.
Completely dropped the ball and the whole world is watching you do it.
Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en
In what way did the U.S. "completely drop the ball"?
As far as I can tell there are two things that could have been done better:
1. Much more funding for the National Stockpile of PPE and ventilators.
2. An early attempt to do a lock down.
Testing could have been done faster, but given that no attempt was made at containment, this likely would not have made any difference. It may have made things worse in some cases.
How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Hospital ships sent to hot spots? Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs?
The U.S. has done a reasonably competent job as far as I can tell. The U.S. has a very good expert leading the federal response, in Dr. Fauci. How many countries have such an expert in charge of their response?
Testing could have been done at all, period. Until ~two weeks ago, US hasn't been doing any meaningful testing; courtesy of a) FDA/CDC bureaucracy boondoggle, and b) both state and federal governments still thinking "it's just a flu".
> no attempt was made at containment
And why is that?
> would not have made any difference
Monitoring hotspots as they develop would vastly improve the ability to control the spread. Perhaps social distancing measures would've started earlier.
> How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators?
You mean the one that's being made by seizing PPEs earmarked for hospitals?
> How many have cargo planes flying supplies?
Everyone who has a cargo plane or can charter one.
> Hospital ships sent to hot spots?
It's just a moving hospital.
> Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers?
Everyone has their version of a field hospital.
> An organization with the capabilities of the CDC?
CDC was even more impotent in this case than WHO.
> The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs?
Strangely not used when it mattered.
--
The rest of the world has been watching US response for almost two months now. It's hard to see it as anything but the worst in the entire Western world.
2. Containment wasn't seen as a viable strategy among virtually any free and democratic country. Locking citizens up in apartment buildings wasn't considered an option. What free country has achieved containment? Maybe South Korea?
3. The U.S. national stock pile had millions of PPE and 12,000+ ventilators. The U.S. miltary also supplied thousands of ventilators. I'll ask again: which other countries had comparable national stockpiles?
4. Commercial cargo is extremely expensive currently which means demand is high and supply is constrained. I'll ask again: which countries have their own fleet of global-reach cargo planes?
5. Okay it's "just a floating hospital" so how many other countries have fully equipped hospitals they can float into port within days?
6. Is everyone's version of a field hospital up to the specifications of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? I doubt the U.S. field hospitals are inferior to any country's.
7. The FDA and CDC has been working with drug and testing companies quite competently, as far as I can tell. Other countries will almost certainly benefit from the work the U.S. FDA/CDC are doing.
8. The Abbot Labs test is in use, and it matters now. Again, who else had such sophisticated tests so quickly?
You (and many others) seem to be watching a lot of news media that is designed to entertain you, so you keep watching. It's not a bad thing that the U.S. is held to a higher standard but you shouldn't be ignorant that you're holding it to a higher standard. And you should keep your facts straight. Otherwise you risk buying into a narrative that, while entertaining or appealing to your biases, may be largely false.
At least California (and more specifically, the Bay Area) seem to be on top of it.
I found this map breaks down the case numbers with a higher level of detail https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
How long can it take it build machines that produce masks?
It's been weeks with this shortage. By now, there should be some production lines that spit out a couple of million a day off these things.
Depends on the masks. Surgical masks are material-constrained. N95 masks require manufacturing using specialized and very precise machines, which are themselves built in... guess where. China. This pandemic hit the world in precisely the best way to disrupt the global supply chains.
Very simple machines to produce these things.
It’s really absurd how many trillions are being wasted on a shutdown but hospitals don’t have the capability to buy masks.
The problem is the Fed should be competent enough to centralize the process but they seem to have made themselves just one more part of the mess.
And that was written 2/3 a century ago.
What possible reason could there be for distribution not to be transparent?
Anyone who disagrees with this strategy should suggest an alternative. Allowing life-saving supplies to sit unused in hospital stockpiles while people die seems like a pretty stupid alternative.
The same federal government that said few days ago that "The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use"
The same federal government that claimed governors should find their own supplies.
The same federal government that gives masks to private companies and then have countries outbid each other for them.
Not even. It is going in to HHS/FEMA warehouses where "vetted" medical suppliers can buy the inventory at wholesale rates and resell it to hospitals at market rate. A prominent GOP fundraiser just quit his day job to start a company named Blue Flame that within a week was on this coveted list.
Edit: I found a good Reddit comment that lays it all out with sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/fwu2m0/hospitals_...
Do you have a source for this? The article here doesn't say where the stuff is going.
Instantly disprovable with facts:
1. NY is not politically aligned with Trump in the least. They have received a huge amount of federal support.
2. Los Angeles is not politically aligned with Trump, they have also received significant federal support.
This kind of intellectual dishonesty among the anti-Trump is as shocking as Trump's own level of intellectual dishonesty.