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@Supersizethatorder-mutt 's original post. You mostly have ventilators in the ICU's, and in a few other places for emergency medicine. (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilator). The ICUs have so much space and equipment for so many beds. The ICUs, like everything else in the hospital, are funded (indirectly) by health insurers, who want to minimize their costs. There aren't a ton of government bucks funding more hospital capacity, unless you're thinking of Medicare or Tricare, which aren't throwing money around for building sprees. So ICUs are funded for normal times, as is everything else in the hospital.
These times aren't normal.
If you want more ventilators, you either get bigger ICUs, or maybe you set up emergency ICU space from other space in the hospital--but hospitals don't have a ton of other space, and it's not easy to make that kind of space.
Also, ICUs are fairly full most of the time from other causes, like people who have had heart attacks.
As for the CDC being the culprit here: the CDC isn't a heavily-funded agency. The people I know there do incredible work because they're committed, but they don't get a lot of funding or support to do it. They scrape by. I don't know why you think the CDC or the NHS has authority to make hospitals build bigger ICUs or buy more ventilators in normal times. Maybe they get that authority now, but the horse is already out of the barn.
