Bostonheelfish

6 minutes ago, stirs said:

I think of elevators being touched, hand rails and places like Chinatown, where everyone opens their shops.  Food delivery and such will have to be sooooo coordinated to feed people in NY confined to their apts.  Big task

I hear you.  What bothers me are the joggers running on the sidewalks right now hacking their desperate breathes everywhere where people are walking for their necessities 

28 minutes ago, stirs said:

In the end, whether Dem or Pub, Fed or State, there are going to be lots of things to learn from  something that comes from left field.  I don't trust pols with what they do see coming, much less the things that they cannot.  Nobody in the world was ready for this. 

And NYC is the land version of the USS Petri Dish.  I am not sure what kinds of efforts would work there short of putting them in jail, which was floated because they would not close the bars.  Everyone is going to have it.  That is why I said take the draconian measures with the at risk folks and provide for them.  Social distancing in NYC is quite impossible.

We won't know the success of social distancing for a while, but people are staying in their apartments.  I went to CVS at midnight last night, and Manhattan was as quiet as I've ever heard.  No one was outside, hardly any traffic etc.  Target is controlling the flow of customers into the store to allow for social distancing to occur while inside the store, and the lines outside have people spread apart at least six feet.  It's very real here, and people are taking it seriously.  There's obviously bozos everywhere, but the hardest part will be preventing another spread after quarantine is over (whenever that is).

10 minutes ago, Wes21 said:

You seem pretty sure of yourself, so I figured you had given this some thought and done some research.  I guess you are just speaking from emotion and not facts.

I guess so, Wes21.

3 minutes ago, Wes21 said:

That's alot of words without an answer.  So let's take the 30,000 number.  How many ventilators do you think they actually need?  More than 30,000 and that's just the remainder?  Less than 30,000?  Exactly 30,000?

What does this even mean?  I don't understand the point you're trying to make.  They need ventilators, estimated at 30,000 at this point.  

2 minutes ago, Wes21 said:

That's alot of words without an answer.  So let's take the 30,000 number.  How many ventilators do you think they actually need?  More than 30,000 and that's just the remainder?  Less than 30,000?  Exactly 30,000?

What makes you think I have the answer to this question?

9 minutes ago, stirs said:

What mitigation efforts are the Feds in charge of vs state and local?

The federal can restrict travel.  States cannot.  NYC's hands were tied.  They did not have the right to shut down the airports and shut down the highways.  Any disease monitoring of people traveling within or to the U.S. is all in the jurisdiction of the federal gov't.  The states cannot overstep that jurisdiction.

1 hour ago, Wes21 said:

So in your estimation, what part does the hospital, the city of New York and the state of New York play in the need for ventilators?

They should only be responsible for what is reasonably foreseeable and it should be relative to their capabilities.  No healthcare system in the world is prepared for this pandemic, but the ones who had more notice before it got to their shores have a duty to help prevent the spread and treat those infected to the extent possible. New York state cannot direct other states to produce medical equipment, they can only direct those factories within their jurisdiction.  The federal government was in the best position to coordinate the effort to increase ventilator production.  The hospitals, and our healthcare system is not designed to combat a pandemic (again, no country's is).  This is a known fact, the assumption being, if there is such an emergency, the federal government would be there assist. The federal gov't didn't even place a hold on price gouging for medical supplies.  States were competing with each other for medical supplies, and the medical supply companies were price gouging (oh yeah, the Federal gov't was also competing against the states for these supplies).  That is egregious. 

Everyone has a duty to mitigate this pandemic.  What percentage do states, hospitals and the federal gov't have with regard to meeting that duty?  I have no idea.  That's too speculative, but I can say the federal gov't is best situated to protect the people in this country, and thus should bear most of the responsibility.

1 hour ago, stirs said:

The Fed is a genie, you rub their belly and poof. 500k ventilators appear.  You know, cause everyone knew for the last 50 years that they should have warehouses full of these.

This is not anything that any gov has planned for.  Since budgets mean nothing anymore, I guess they can buy warehouses and put 400 million rolls of toilet paper in them for the next unseen virus, in case it affects the GI tract.

And so on and so on.

I am not a Trump fan, nor did I vote for him, but the finger pointing, with no thought beyond Twitter "knowledge" is pretty awesome to watch.

No one is saying that the Fed needs to perform magic; but considering they bungled the mitigation effort, the fact that an emergency wasn't declared for the funding of ventilators weeks ago is disgusting.

39 minutes ago, stirs said:

How many governors out of the 50 are complaining that they are getting no assistance?

The virus hasn't even come close to peaking in NYC yet, other states won't need assistance until much later, so governors are not asking yet because the need isn't there, and if there aren't enough tests, it's harder to know exactly how many people are infected currently.  The federal gov't sent 4,000 ventilators to NY state when they need 30,000.  The issue isn't whether the fed has done anything, it's whether the fed has done any where close to what is needed to help save the lives of 3.3 million people (this is 1% of the U.S. population).

37 minutes ago, Wes21 said:

The federal isn't void, the states have just done a good job of convincing people that they don't have a higher responsibility in all of this.  Our country is set up in a particular way, and our local and state governments are on the front lines of this.  The feds are there to assist, not take over every hospital in every city in the entire country.

Nobody is asking the federal government to take over every hospital right now.  Supplies are low, and the federal government can come in and help boost production, and stop price gouging.  The federal government can also allocate additional resources to states on a state by state basis based on needs at specific times. This isn’t difficult, every part of the government needs to help. A national health emergency is not the time to stand on loose principles if it means people die.