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For several months, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his officials have released a mist of promises aimed at reassuring a country in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump and his team have not met critics.
They speak numbers. Puzzling numbers about masks along the way. About the tests that are taken. About the ships sailing to the rescue, the building and shipping of breathing machines, the emergence of field hospitals, the planes loaded with supplies from abroad, the dollars flowing to the paralyzed companies.
Piercing that fog is the fundamental reality that Americans are running out of medical supplies and much of the government’s most needed financial aid when they need it most, and they were told they would have it.
Experts believe the United States is now at or near COVID-19 disease and death.
There is no doubt that on the main fronts – masks, gowns, diagnostic tests, ventilators, and more – the federal government is now pushing to catch up. Impressive numbers for equipment and test procedures are floating in the pipeline.
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But, to a large extent, they will reach the downward slope of the pandemic, which will put the United States in a better position if the same virus strikes again but lands too late for the deadly curve of this outbreak.
With regard to fans, for example, Trump recently allowed: “Many of them will come at a time when we won’t need them as much.”
EVAN VUCCI / AP
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, initially downplayed the threat posed by the coronavirus.
Two weeks ago, Trump unveiled an innovative diagnostic test that can produce results in minutes rather than days or a week. The US testing system The US, the key to containing the spread of the infection, has been a failure in the crisis, as public health authorities (but never Trump) acknowledged in March. The quick test could help change that.
Like other glimpses of hope that may or may not come to something, Trump presented these tests as an “entirely new ball game.” New machines and test cartridges are being shipped nationwide, and they can be promising. But they are not ready for actual use in large quantities.
New Hampshire, for example, received 15 rapid test machines but 120 cartridges instead of the expected 1500. Only two machines can be used. “I’m hitting my head on the wall, really,” Republican Governor Chris Sununu said Wednesday. “We are going to continue to press Washington several times a day to get what we need.”
False starts and dead ends are inevitable in any crisis, especially one caused by a never-before-seen virus. By its nature, a crisis means that we are not on top of it. Despair is the mother of invention here and officials around the world are attacking it, much more successfully than in the United States.
But bold promises and flowery guarantees were made, day after day, from the White House and a zigzagging president who downplayed the danger for months and consistently exaggerates what Washington is doing about it.
“We are getting them huge amounts of supplies,” he said of the health workers. “Unbelievable. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.” This was when Americans were seeing something completely different: doctors using trash bags for makeshift protection.
Carlos Osorio / AP
The United States has had a hard time evaluating everyone who needs to evaluate.
Masks, gloves, robes
In hospitals, masks, gloves, and other protective clothing come with the territory. But doctors, nurses, stewardesses, and other front-line workers have had to go begging for the basics, even before public health leaders turned around and recommended facial coverage for everyone outside the home.
The sheer scale of the pandemic extended supplies into even better-prepared countries. However, the enduring shortage in the United States is not only due to lack of foresight, but also to vacillation as the pandemic began to sicken and kill Americans.
It wasn’t until mid-March, when some hospitals were already treating thousands of infected patients without enough equipment and asking for help, that the government placed bulk orders for N95 masks and other basic healthcare needs for its arsenal, The Associated Press reported. Washington suspended supplies for two months after global alarms about a pandemic sounded in January.
And it turns out that the Strategic National Reserve is not the strength of supply that you might have thought by its formidable name.
It peaked days ago, before the peak of the pandemic in the US. And it never served its purpose of closing the most essential and immediate supply gaps, although it did help. Last week, authorities said the arsenal had been depleted by 90 percent of its protective equipment, and the rest would be retained only for federal employees.
Some shipments to the states were poor. Wrong masks were shipped to Illinois on a load of 300,000. Michigan got only half the number that was supposed to be in a shipment of 450,000. When he was trying to get 10,000 fans in late March, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California said he received 170 bankruptcies from the national reserve, as well as good guys.
When Alabama officials opened a shipment of medical masks from the reserve, they found more than 5,000 with rot. They had expired in 2010, state officials said, but the Obama administration and then the Trump administration left them in place.
When it became clear that the critical shortage was not being addressed, the self-styled “wartime president”, who had gone to Norfolk, Virginia, to send the USS Comfort Navy hospital ship to New York City, blamed the states and stated that the federal government is not a “shipping clerk”.
Tests
“Anyone who needs a test gets a test,” Trump said March 6. “They have the exams. And the exams are beautiful.” He said the same day: “Anyone who wants an exam can take an exam.” ‘
Whether it’s a matter of needing a test or just wanting one, your guarantee was not true at the time, it is not now, and it will not be any time soon.
The largely, but still vastly insufficient, ability to assess people is primarily directed at those who are already ill or at essential workers at increased risk of exposure.
If you are sick with the suspected COVID-19 but are taking it home, the test may not have been done. If you’re concerned that you’ve been exposed and might be carrying and spreading the virus, but you’re feeling fine so far, you’re usually off the radar, too.
Evan Vucci / AP
President Donald Trump listens as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House.
Trump tries to assure people who need to fly that passengers are tested getting on and off flights. He is wrong. Instead, some major airports conduct evaluations, which means asking passengers questions and checking their temperature, not rubbing their nostrils to make sure.
Many people with the virus will never get sick. Others who have it will eventually get sick. Both groups are contagious. But there is no ability in the days of greatest danger to evaluate apparently healthy people in large numbers, so preventive distancing is still the best defense, as in ancient times.
Within three weeks of China’s New Year’s Eve notification to world health authorities of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases, China had sequenced the genetic makeup of the virus, German scientists had developed a test to detect it, and the World Health Organization had adopted the test and was moving towards global distribution.
Ten days ago, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bypassed the WHO test and sponsored theirs, which failed. Trump said the WHO test was flawed, but it was not.
Precious time was lost as the EE test was corrected. In the USA, it was distributed in a limited way, then more broadly, but it still did not measure up to the countries that were above the crisis. Testing was further delayed during the critical February when the virus took root in the US population. USA
In contrast, Germany moved ahead with aggressive testing of a broad segment of the population when it had fewer than 10 cases in January. It has experienced far fewer deaths proportionally than the United States.
“There were many, many opportunities not to end up where we are,” Dr. Ashish K Jha, director of the Harvard Institute of Global Health, told the AP.
Trump told Americans on March 13 that a division of Google’s parent company was launching a website that would allow people to determine online whether they should be tested and, if so, stop by a nearby location to obtain one, a remarkable shortcut in theory. But a game changer in practice?
“It is going to be done very quickly,” he said. The website is operational, but it operates in only four California counties. The access sites he promised would expedite testing were fraught with shortages and delays in state after state, so many people with symptoms and a doctor’s order were rejected.
Fans
Trump dusted off the Defense Production Law, allowing him to order manufacturers and shippers to do and deliver what the country needs in the crisis. His move raised expectations that a new wave of emergency supplies in general and ventilators in particular could help patients and caregivers. He and his advisers inflated those hopes.
Under the president’s “vigorous and swift” order to General Motors, said Peter Navarro, a key White House man in the emergency supply chain, the new fans would be ready in “Trump’s time, that is, the fastest possible”.
However, Trump has delayed using all of his powers under the law to order the production of private companies. A GM presidential directive on fan manufacturing essentially told the company to do what it was already doing.
Although most people get better with COVID-19 without medical attention, the sickest cannot breathe without a ventilator to help them recover. Fan deficit has been the scariest deficiency as more people become infected and die for hours. In the current chaos, the size of the deficit at the national level is unknown.
In the absence of what they consider to be reliable federal leadership, several states formed a supply consortium to coordinate purchases and increase their purchasing power. The federal government has collaborated with state and private companies to stimulate supplies, although not exactly in an atmosphere of trust.
Governors accuse Washington of exchanging states on machines. Washington accuses some of them of trying to build an irrational mattress that deprives other more desperate states.
According to the scientific model most favored by federal authorities, the country probably needs about 17,000 ventilators to operate only COVID-19 patients at the peak of the pandemic, at this time, a figure that exceeds 35,000 in the worst of the cases.
“We have more than 100,000 under construction right now or soon to start,” Trump said a week ago. He acknowledged that they will not arrive on time.
Where is the money?
“This will provide the help that is urgently needed,” Trump said in signing an economic rescue package. The need may be urgent, but delivery has not been.
More than two weeks later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said with some exaggeration, but not much, that “the money is not yet out.”
For the bureaucracy.
Due to website failures.
Due to confusion among money lenders to grow and those who need it to keep their businesses afloat.
Too much for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s prediction that the loans could be reversed and the money transferred to the companies’ bank accounts the same day the applications were received.
However, due to the avalanche of outstanding loans, Congress already has to find more grant money to help companies cover payroll. Only a small fraction of the loans have been released.
Meanwhile, state officials are criticized when they try to administer the unemployment benefits that Washington has expanded and is paying but that make states try to administer.
Frustration with the virus pack is going viral.
In Portland, Maine, a licensed orthopedic medical assistant, Margaret Heath Carignan, called the unemployment office on a day reserved for people with last names starting with A through H. And called and called. In all, she said, 291 times before giving up.
