May 21st 2020

By Walter Einenkel

Daily Kos

At the end of March, Donald Trump announced that the FDA approved a machine that disinfected N95 respirator masks, allowing up to 20 uses of a single mask. This sounded great, as the Trump administration’s criminally negligent handling of the country’s stockpile of protective equipment had left thousands of frontline workers pleading for help. The Ohio-based Battelle, the company that made the machines, claimed that this process would not degrade the mask’s “performance.”

At the time, reports claimed the machine would cost the government $60 million for 60 machines. But as NBC News reports, that number somehow ballooned to $413 million over the next few days. By the beginning of May, the cost of these machines was capped at $600 million. And guess what? Yes, like everything else Donald Trump has ever promised anyone, what these machines can do was also grossly exaggerated.

According to NBC, “scientists and nurses say the recycled masks treated by these machines begin to degrade after two or three treatments, not 20, and the company says its own recent field testing has only confirmed the integrity of the masks for four cycles of use and decontamination.”

The Trump administration’s criminally slow response to contain the COVID-19 virus domestically, followed by the equally criminally slow response to getting frontline health workers the proper protective gear needed has meant the White House continues to just throw money at any person willing to pretend they have a solution. This has included tens of millions of dollars spent on things like ventilators that have never materialized. 

NBC News spoke with nurses and others who have said the machines are a joke and the costs would be exorbitant even if the machines worked as advertised—which they don’t. A source close to the Mike Pence-led task force told NBC that the Trump administration takes big wild swings and doesn’t care whether or not anything works. They are just looking for a win here or there, a big headline for Trump to peacock behind: “They’re gambling that they’ll win one time, and if they don’t they’ll just deflect, which is what we see inside all the time.”

Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of California has presented the American public with receipts showing that the Trump administration allowed companies to export tons of protective equipment and machines during the early months of the spreading pandemic. The flip side of this transaction is that while companies made money selling off equipment that Americans would soon desperately need, they got huge markups to begin bringing back equipment once the coronavirus pandemic hit America hard.

The Defense Logistics Agency, the arm of the Pentagon working with Trump’s coronavirus task force, told NBC that the $600 million figure is just a cap, depending on what demands come up. As of right now, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for at least $413 million.

Posted with permission