April 17th 2020

By Jason Hackman

Daily Kos

Back on March 19th, Trump angrily responded during a press conference to the states calls, begging the government ventilators, PPE, masks, and testing.

“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work … the federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. We’re not a shipping clerk. As with testing — the governors are supposed to be doing it … but this is really for the local governments, governors, and people within the state, depending on the way they divided it up.

Trump has repeatedly pushed the responsibility of acquiring ventilators to the states over the last month as we’ve seen cases rise to horrifying levels and the death toll doubling every 4-5 days. To me it seems obvious that we still need ventilators. It is obvious.

One of the most crucial pieces of equipment health systems are clamoring for is mechanical ventilation technology. Yet the federal government is not the only entity maintaining secrecy on exactly how many ventilators are available at any given time. While many health systems have had to improvise repairs on ventilators they receive from the stockpile and figure out ways to modify other respiratory equipment such as anesthesia and BiPAP machines, few disclose how much ventilation capacity they have.

So it would be a little odd that when it comes to Russia, Trump appears to have found the both the ventilators he didn’t provide to the states and his inner shipping clerk.

The Russian government said it would "certainly accept" President Trump's offer to donate ventilators to treat coronavirus patients in the country.

Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. would be willing to send ventilators to Russia, noting that "they're having a hard time in Moscow. We're going to help them."

Last time I checked we’re having a hard time in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and just about everywhere else in the US.  With our continued lack of testing and inaccurate reporting of cases and deaths it isn’t even clear the coronavirus crisis is anywhere near ending.

Officially, we’ve crossed the 31,000 mark with more than 2,400 coronavirus deaths per day yet Trump prioritizes Moscow over New York? 

Posted with permission