ProPublica: In July 2006, with an aggressive and novel strain of the flu circulating in Asia and the Middle East, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a sweeping pandemic preparedness plan.
Using computer models to calculate how a disease could spread rapidly through the city’s five boroughs, experts concluded New York needed a substantial stockpile of both masks and ventilators. If the city confronted a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu, the experts found, it would face a “projected shortfall of between 2,036 and 9,454 ventilators.”
The city’s department of health, working with the state, was to begin purchasing ventilators and to “stockpile a supply of facemasks,” according to the report. Shortly after it was released, Bloomberg held a pandemic planning summit with top federal officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, now the face of the national coronavirus response.
In the end, the alarming predictions failed to spur action. In the months that followed, the city acquired just 500 additional ventilators as the effort to create a larger stockpile fizzled amid budget cuts.
Even those extra ventilators are long gone, the health department said on Sunday. The lifesaving devices broke down over time and were auctioned off by the city at least five years ago because the agency couldn’t afford to maintain them. read more
Lefties Lie to try and prove that Conservatives are stupid and ignorant.
Conservatives tell the truth and expose Leftie Stupidity.
Nancy, please unleash Sheila Jackson Lee to open Pandora’s box on what did Trump know and when did he know it via Crono virus. From Obama not replenishing what supplies he used to this bumbling incompetency, to graft and actual theft in cities dominated by Democrats the Republicans would have a chance to sweep all the states between and including N.Y. & California.
So in other news, Cuomo ordered the National Guard to remove ventilators from Upstate hospitals and send them to NYC.
And when Trump said a few weeks ago he’d get the ventilators but they were not going to need them the media mocked and ridiculed him. Again vindicated. So let’s get the damn economy open already.
From the liberal article:
“ Over the past few decades, cuts in Medicaid reimbursement and other fiscal pressures have reshaped the hospital industry, leaving the city’s public and private medical centers with, collectively, thousands fewer beds.”
Gee, I wonder what could have possibly happened In the last 10 years to the hospital industry that reduced the number of beds. Nope. Drawing a blank. Not a clue