Coronavirus Thread

[bobongo]

Cuomo demanded the US send the entire emergency stockpile of 20,000 ventilators to him. Luckily we said no and instead shipped him some, while shipping 10 here, 20 there, 30 over here. Turns out, Cuomo never even needed 5,000. So in the meantime across the country, nobody who needed a ventilator ever went without one. Imagine trying to manage that supply chain when governors and hospitals and everybody else are panicking and demanding far more supplies than what they actually need at the time. What a mess.

At the time, New York was by far the hardest hit area of the country. He wanted the ventilators sent there, and then on to the next hot spot after the peak in New York passed. A very reasonable and understandable request. As for your comment about "...demanding far more supplies than what they actually need...", it's perfectly understandable that he thought at the time he might well be needing them. "Turns out, Cuomo never even needed 5,000", you said. But he had no way of knowing that. "Turns out...", is very telling. Said with 20/20 hindsight. "Turns out...", indeed.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

At the time, New York was by far the hardest hit area of the country. He wanted the ventilators sent there, and then on to the next hot spot after the peak in New York passed. A very reasonable and understandable request. As for your comment about "...demanding far more supplies than what they actually need...", it's perfectly understandable that he thought at the time he might well be needing them. "Turns out, Cuomo never even needed 5,000", you said. But he had no way of knowing that. "Turns out...", is very telling. Said with 20/20 hindsight. "Turns out...", indeed.

False. The models showed he wouldn't need 20,000 even in a worse case scenario for 1 month. Meanwhile, other people needed them. We weren't saying he could never have them. We had a shortage and had to allocate them in a just-in-time motion to ensure everybody who needed them could get them.

 

[LibertyTurns]

That's the whole point of a government. It's there to prepare for foreseeable events that private businesses won't take the risk to get ready for or that require investments larger than any financial business would underwrite. Of course, they are preparing for things that don't appear to present an immediate threat. That's their job.

A lot fo us don't like that because we have to pay taxes to finance it. (Shoot, I'm not exactly brimming with joy every April 15 myself.) But … until you can think of a way to do what governments do by completely private means (and good luck, btw) we need them to consider long term risks and opportunities and prepare for them.

I’ll give you an example: We might get attacked by China. In order to win a Major Theater War in China let’s say for argument’s sake we’d need about 16 Carrier Strike Groups, probably 30 Army Divisions, and maybe 125 Air Force Wings, and 20 Marine Regiments.

We have 10, 18, 57 and 11 respectively at an annual budget of $725B/yr give or take some loose change. Do we spend $2T/yr instead on defense to to be safe, do we maintain our $725B budget and hope we can hold off the red horde long enough to stem the tide, do we cut defense and hope for the best? That’s just 1 example. You know there’s always the risk they’ll attack.

How about doing that plus staging equipment, people and resources to respond to every natural disaster- hurricane, solar flares, asteroids, famine, plague, drought, floods, locust attacks, etc? Where would it end?

Government people want to avoid accountability at all costs so they ask for everything in the universe with the caveat “don’t blame me if I didn’t get it, I warned you”.

You just can’t prepare for every eventuality. There’s not enough money, people or resources.

 

[bobongo]

False. The models showed he wouldn't need 20,000 even in a worse case scenario for 1 month. Meanwhile, other people needed them. We weren't saying he could never have them. We had a shortage and had to allocate them in a just-in-time motion to ensure everybody who needed them could get them.

Models showed we wouldn't need 20,000? Well I doubt he had anywhere remotely near that many, since there were only 50,000 in the whole country. Remember, New York was the hotspot of the nation at that time. He wanted them there, and then to send them on to the next hotspot. Nothing wrong in a governor being prepared for the worst that could befall his state. There were places that could spare them, and no national clearinghouse to direct their use to the worst hit areas. We're just lucky we didn't need it, but that's hindsight.

bewlbo on March 13:
I have forgotten the number, and I could be wrong with my recollection of it here, but that is the same thing that has concerned me for a while – it was somewhere around 5% of people who get the virus develop serious complications that requires hospitalization. The flu is still very active where I am. And I think I read that we only have about 50,000 respirators in the entire country combined... Many of which are constantly used for other health issues obviously.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Models showed we wouldn't need 20,000? Well I doubt he had anywhere remotely near that many, since there were only 50,000 in the whole country. Remember, New York was the hotspot of the nation at that time. He wanted them there, and then to send them on to the next hotspot. Nothing wrong in a governor being prepared for the worst that could befall his state. There were places that could spare them, and no national clearinghouse to direct their use to the worst hit areas. We're just lucky we didn't need it, but that's hindsight.

bewlbo on March 13:
I have forgotten the number, and I could be wrong with my recollection of it here, but that is the same thing that has concerned me for a while – it was somewhere around 5% of people who get the virus develop serious complications that requires hospitalization. The flu is still very active where I am. And I think I read that we only have about 50,000 respirators in the entire country combined... Many of which are constantly used for other health issues obviously.

Yep, correct - we had about 50,000 ventilators in the entire country and about 20,000 in the emergency stockpile. Other people needed ventilators too, but if we gave them all 20,000 in the emergency stockpile (he wanted the government to send him the entirety of the emergency stockpile), others that needed them (when he didn't yet) wouldn't have them. Again, it wasn't that the government was unwilling to give them to Cuomo, but just not yet, because even if he ended up needing them, he wouldn't for quite a few weeks. We were making them as fast as we could, but were still supply limited. Nobody blames Cuomo for panicking and trying to get ahead of the curve to store a bunch for later. But I'm glad we didn't take him up on it and managed the inventory with everyone's needs in mind and not just his. That way, nobody that needed one went without. IIWII.

 

[takethepoints]

I’ll give you an example: We might get attacked by China. In order to win a Major Theater War in China let’s say for argument’s sake we’d need about 16 Carrier Strike Groups, probably 30 Army Divisions, and maybe 125 Air Force Wings, and 20 Marine Regiments.

We have 10, 18, 57 and 11 respectively at an annual budget of $725B/yr give or take some loose change. Do we spend $2T/yr instead on defense to to be safe, do we maintain our $725B budget and hope we can hold off the red horde long enough to stem the tide, do we cut defense and hope for the best? That’s just 1 example. You know there’s always the risk they’ll attack.

How about doing that plus staging equipment, people and resources to respond to every natural disaster- hurricane, solar flares, asteroids, famine, plague, drought, floods, locust attacks, etc? Where would it end?

Government people want to avoid accountability at all costs so they ask for everything in the universe with the caveat “don’t blame me if I didn’t get it, I warned you”.

You just can’t prepare for every eventuality. There’s not enough money, people or resources.

Here's the example used to use for military spending.

How can we find out how many ICBMs we need to deter an attack by the Soviet Union? The answer is easy. We destroy ICBMs until the SU attacks us; then we know for sure! The obvious problem is that we would also have ~ 30M dead (if we were lucky) and substantial parts of the US rendered uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the problem with all those pesky commissars. So we vastly overbuilt ICBM capacity and, since they weren't going to make the experiment any more then we were, so did the SU. Both sides knew we had built "retaliatory" weapons far beyond what was probably necessary, but neither side felt they had any choice.

I agree (that's twice today!) that there's a limit to everything. We don't have the resources to meet all contingencies. But in the case of the virus, we had already faced potentially devastating disease outbreaks - SARS, MERS, Ebola - in the space of less then 20 years and two of them were brand new. We pretty much knew that there was a high probability that something like SARS-Cov-2 could be on the way; Fauci described it an interview in 2019 (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dr-fauci-has-been-dreading-a-pandemic-like-covid-19-for-years/). Faced with that, that we were apparently fine with cutting back the CDC's capacity to meet such a threat and didn't keep the stockpile up to snuff will not read well for our politicians in the last two administrations. There is a possibility that we'll get hit by an asteroid, but I don't see any major concern about that, despite those two movies. I think our government is capable of determining the probability of threats. What's usually lacking is the political will to address them.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I’ll give you an example: We might get attacked by China. In order to win a Major Theater War in China let’s say for argument’s sake we’d need about 16 Carrier Strike Groups, probably 30 Army Divisions, and maybe 125 Air Force Wings, and 20 Marine Regiments.

We have 10, 18, 57 and 11 respectively at an annual budget of $725B/yr give or take some loose change. Do we spend $2T/yr instead on defense to to be safe, do we maintain our $725B budget and hope we can hold off the red horde long enough to stem the tide, do we cut defense and hope for the best? That’s just 1 example. You know there’s always the risk they’ll attack.

How about doing that plus staging equipment, people and resources to respond to every natural disaster- hurricane, solar flares, asteroids, famine, plague, drought, floods, locust attacks, etc? Where would it end?

Government people want to avoid accountability at all costs so they ask for everything in the universe with the caveat “don’t blame me if I didn’t get it, I warned you”.

You just can’t prepare for every eventuality. There’s not enough money, people or resources.

The entirety of leadership at agencies like the CDC should be fired. They appeared to have no framework in place for how to manage a pandemic - testing, PPE, etc. They utterly and completely failed. How did they not keep up emergency stockpiles? They have 1 job! $10B/year is magnitudes more money than they need to do that. They failed to prioritize what's important, and instead wanted to pay for as many employees as possible doing all kinds of things other than actually doing their job and preparing for things. Some emergency supplies had been around so long they weren't even useable anymore. This **** is not that difficult. You order a certain amount of new supplies every year. Then you constantly rotate older supplies for sale at a discount to hospitals while they are new enough to still be used and in good condition. That way you aren't just throwing crap away and being wasteful. We've known about these sorts of threats for a long time, because we actually get hit with them to varying degrees every few years. But management at the CDC apparently is dysfunctional and incapable of doing the actual real job they're supposed to be doing.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Here's the example used to use for military spending.

How can we find out how many ICBMs we need to deter an attack by the Soviet Union? The answer is easy. We destroy ICBMs until the SU attacks us; then we know for sure! The obvious problem is that we would also have ~ 30M dead (if we were lucky) and substantial parts of the US rendered uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the problem with all those pesky commissars. So we vastly overbuilt ICBM capacity and, since they weren't going to make the experiment any more then we were, so did the SU. Both sides knew we had built "retaliatory" weapons far beyond what was probably necessary, but neither side felt they had any choice.

I agree (that's twice today!) that there's a limit to everything. We don't have the resources to meet all contingencies. But in the case of the virus, we had already faced potentially devastating disease outbreaks - SARS, MERS, Ebola - in the space of less then 20 years and two of them were brand new. We pretty much knew that there was a high probability that something like SARS-Cov-2 could be on the way; Fauci described it an interview in 2019 (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dr-fauci-has-been-dreading-a-pandemic-like-covid-19-for-years/). Faced with that, that we were apparently fine with cutting back the CDC's capacity to meet such a threat and didn't keep the stockpile up to snuff will not read well for our politicians in the last two administrations. There is a possibility that we'll get hit by an asteroid, but I don't see any major concern about that, despite those two movies. I think our government is capable of determining the probability of threats. What's usually lacking is the political will to address them.

And Bush's recommendations regarding potential pandemics were totally ignored by the Obama administration.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

And Bush's recommendations regarding potential pandemics were totally ignored by the Obama administration.

Presidents like Bush or Obama or Trump shouldn't have to micro-manage an agency like CDC to the point that they have to oversee the daily operations...well, that's basically where we are. The leadership at these agencies has never been held accountable for being inept - that should change immediately. It shouldn't be that way. If you're the military, you don't get called into war and say "well sorry, we have no plan or bullets". If you're the CDC you don't get called into war and say "well sorry, we have no plan or supplies."

 

[bobongo]

Nobody blames Cuomo for panicking and trying to get ahead of the curve to store a bunch for later.

Excuse me, I could have sworn I read this just today here in this thread. Blame, criticism, whatever you want to call it:

"What is stupid is whining about or screaming about needing g ventilators, then winding up with thousands of unused ventilators sitting in warehouses unused and unneeded. It is a massive waste of resources that could have best been used elsewhere and it perpetuates needlessly the panic that....well, stupid people feel."

I think Cuomo's actions were quite understandable under the circumstances.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Excuse me, I could have sworn I read this just today here in this thread. Blame, criticism, whatever you want to call it:

"What is stupid is whining about or screaming about needing g ventilators, then winding up with thousands of unused ventilators sitting in warehouses unused and unneeded. It is a massive waste of resources that could have best been used elsewhere and it perpetuates needlessly the panic that....well, stupid people feel."

I think Cuomo's actions were quite understandable under the circumstances.

Did you read what I wrote? I said nobody blames him for panicking and trying to get ahead of the curve LOL. Of course his actions were understandable. It was also wrongheaded and luckily for our country, calmer heads prevailed.

 

[bobongo]

Did you read what I wrote? I said nobody blames him for panicking and trying to get ahead of the curve LOL. Of course his actions were understandable. It was also wrongheaded and luckily for our country, calmer heads prevailed.

Yeah, you said nobody blames him, which is false.
Why do so many say "nobody" when they mean just "I"?

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Yeah, you said nobody blames him, which is false.
Why do so many say "nobody" when they mean just "I"?

What you keep quoting says they thought his actions were understandable. We can empathize with his situation and say we don’t blame him for panicking but also say he was wrong and selfish.

 

[LibertyTurns]

@takethepoints Funny you cite SARS, Ebola, etc as a reason to prepare for a pandemic. Impacts were overhyped and that’s one of the reasons you got an under reaction now for C19.

Maybe the hype monsters need a valium and let folks that understand what they’re dealing with drive the bus for a change.

 

[bobongo]

What you keep quoting says they thought his actions were understandable. We can empathize with his situation and say we don’t blame him for panicking but also say he was wrong and selfish.

No, he wasn't selfish. New York had the biggest problem and he wanted the biggest response directed toward the people of his state. Then, he proposed to send it on where it would be needed next. Whether he panicked and was wrong is debatable, but he was not selfish, IMO.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

No, he wasn't selfish. New York had the biggest problem and he wanted the biggest response directed toward the people of his state. Then, he proposed to send it on where it would be needed next. Whether he panicked and was wrong is debatable, but he was not selfish, IMO.

But plenty of other places needed ventilators too at the same time. Had we given him the entire emergency stockpile, other locations would have run empty. Maybe that’s not selfish, maybe it’s just a pure panic. But it’s still wrong and lucky for us we didn’t do what he wanted. He did get the biggest response. We gave him a freaking boat hospital LOL. And people without any masks lined the shores to take pictures when it arrived. Meanwhile, they shut down AFTER many other places. They didn’t even close their playgrounds until April. They were wrong left right and center.

 

[684Bee]

But plenty of other places needed ventilators too at the same time. Had we given him the entire emergency stockpile, other locations would have run empty. Maybe that’s not selfish, maybe it’s just a pure panic. But it’s still wrong and lucky for us we didn’t do what he wanted.

Seems like there’s been some noise that ventilators maybe weren’t the way to go, and that their overuse may have led to more issues. Very few people that got put on them came off.

 

[MWBATL]

No, he wasn't selfish. New York had the biggest problem and he wanted the biggest response directed toward the people of his state. Then, he proposed to send it on where it would be needed next. Whether he panicked and was wrong is debatable, but he was not selfish, IMO.

Call it whatever you like. He was wrong. The President was right. He didn't need that many.

One of my points was in response to a point made by another poster, to wit:
In a national health crisis, the authorities will, of course, keep as much hospital capacity in reserve as possible. Thinking that you are out of the woods because you aren't in a New York style public disaster is … well, really stupid. That some hospitals in areas with low caseloads aren't at full capacity is a good thing, not an outrage. We might need them going forward (like in a couple of weeks).

My point was really that it isn't stupid to assess the situation differently...the President did, and the Governor did not. I don't doubt that both men were doing their best. I don't think either was stupid. I think one was more accurate in their assessment than the other, and subsequent facts proved that to be the case. Why would you continue with a line of thinking that has already been proven to be over-reaction and wasteful of resources? Or why would you continue to tout the person whose judgement turned out to be not as good as the other person's judgement? And more than anything, why would you call someone who disagrees...well, stupid?

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

No, he wasn't selfish. New York had the biggest problem and he wanted the biggest response directed toward the people of his state. Then, he proposed to send it on where it would be needed next. Whether he panicked and was wrong is debatable, but he was not selfish, IMO.

At the time that he made that request, New York was not yet the biggest problem. Perhaps he saw that it was in all likelihood going to become the biggest problem, and for that his overstatement can be accepted. We do not know just what he was thinking at the time. We do know, however, that he and/or DeBlasio requested additional assistance in the form of hospital beds in NYC, so a ship was sent to NYC harbor and temporary facilities were set up in Manhattan, both of which went largely unused.

 

[Milwaukee]

lol Ding Ding Ding winner