Trump: Government sending 400 ventilators to New York City amid coronavirus outbreak

President Trump said Tuesday the federal government plans to send 400 ventilators to New York City, with more equipment on the way. “The World market for face masks and ventilators is Crazy. We are helping the states to get equipment, but it is not easy. Just got 400 Ventilators for @NYCMayor Bill de Blasio,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Work beginning on 4 hospitals in New York! Millions of different type items coming!”

The shipment represents a fraction of the 15,000 ventilators Mayor Bill de Blasio called for last week as the city and state become the epicenter of coronavirus in the United States. De Blasio repeatedly has sounded the alarm on the shortage of ventilators in New York City hospitals, as many COVID-19 patients need the machines to help them breathe. De Blasio has also sought millions of N-95 masks and more Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for medical professionals. "If we don’t get ventilators this week, we are going to lose lives we could have saved — I can’t be blunter than that,” de Blasio said on CNN Monday.

New York now has more than 23,000 positive cases of coronavirus in the state, with roughly half of that in New York City. De Blasio, over the weekend, said he had asked for Trump to use the Defense Production Act to acquire ventilators for patients suffering from the illness. On Tuesday, the president said the act was "in full force," but that he did not need to use it: "The Defense Production Act is in full force, but haven’t had to use it because no one has said NO! Millions of masks coming as back up to States."

The Defense Production Act, which was first enacted in 1950 as a response to the Korean War and has since been re-invoked more than 50 times, is meant to streamline the production of medical supplies to help the country battle the coronavirus pandemic and require businesses to sign contracts or fulfill orders deemed necessary for national defense. Under the act, companies are required to accept and prioritize contracts from the government and to prioritize “materials, services and facilities to promote the national defense or to maximize domestic energy supplies.” While this provision has historically been used to ramp up military production, amid the COVID-19 pandemic the act will be used for medical supplies.

Meanwhile, Trump also referred to the temporary hospitals in New York City. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced over the weekend four sites in the state that will serve as additional space for hospitals overflowing due to the coronavirus outbreak. The four initial sites recommended by the Army Corps of Engineers are the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, locations at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island, SUNY Old Westbury and the Westchester Convention Center. "We have a plan of action to help stop the spread of this virus, including expanding hospital capacity and identifying new hospital beds, and after meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers and hearing their recommendations, we stand ready for the building of temporary hospitals at four facilities in New York State,” Cuomo said Saturday.

The sites were identified by an inspection team led by the Army Corps of Engineers and included state officials from New York’s Office of General Services, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, the New York Department of Health and the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs. The team visited more than a dozen sites to review their capability to serve as temporary hospitals, Cuomo’s office said. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic earlier this month. As of Tuesday morning, the U.S. had more than 46,000 positive cases across the country. Nearly 600 people have died.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-to-send-400-ventilators-to-nyc-as-state-grapples-with-coronavirus-outbreak

US was more prepared for pandemic than any other country, Johns Hopkins study found

The United States was ranked the best-prepared country in the world to handle a pandemic in late 2019 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHCHS) – an assessment seemingly at odds with claims by Democrats that the Trump administration left the country vulnerable to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. The Global Health Security Index was was "developed with guidance from an international panel of experts from 13 countries, with research by the Economist Intelligence Unit," The Washington Post reported last year. "More than 100 researchers spent a year collecting and validating publicly available data.” At the same time, the paper noted that the U.S. score was still not perfect, and that "factors driving down the U.S. score include the risks of social unrest and terrorism, and low public confidence in government."

President Trump's campaign has argued in recent days that misinformation may be one of the leading causes of that lack of confidence. For example, Trump's team has pointed to claims by presidential contender Joe Biden that "no one on the National Security Council staff was put in charge" of pandemic preparedness, based on a report that in May 2018, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton eliminated the NSC’s Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense in a reorganization effort. Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer reportedly was ousted as senior director, and no replacement was named. But, FactCheck.org has determined that the matter amounted to a reorganization, and that “some team members [of the NSC pandemic office] were shifted to other groups, and others took over some of [the top official’s] duties.” The White House says the NSC remains involved in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. A senior administration official said earlier this month that the NSC’s global health security directorate was absorbed into another division where similar responsibilities still exist, but under different titles. The work of coordinating policy and making sure that decisions made by Trump’s coronavirus task force are implemented is still the job of the NSC.

Separately, the Biden team has repeatedly argued that the president once referred to coronavirus as a "hoax." That claim has been refuted by numerous fact-checkers, including the Post's, which found that Trump was clearly referring to Democrats' efforts to blame him for the pandemic, not the virus itself. Additionally, numerous Democrats, including Biden, have falsely claimed that the president cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget. The Associated Press has noted that those claims "distort" the facts.

Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased. Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies. Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump. “The CDC’s response has been excellent, as it has been in the past,” said John Auerbach, president of the nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health, which works with government at all levels to improve the nation’s response to high-risk health crises. Some Democrats have charged that Trump decimated the nation’s public health leadership, but Auerbach said CDC’s top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-was-most-prepared-country-in-the-world-for-pandemics-johns-hopkins-study-found-in-2019

>>8546714

>>8546714

Delay tactic..it all they have left.