Quote (thundercock @ 30 Mar 2020 00:41)
I understand that they are difficult to build and that's obviously built into your supply model. I'm not trivializing the complexity, but I am saying that acting swiftly and decisively will save lives. Part of the issue will be resource allocation and rationing. New York won't be able to hang onto the ventilators forever because the Federal government has supremacy.
Given that a huge amount of COVID cases are in NY, it makes sense that they should get priority since it's an issue NOW. Keep in mind, we don't need to completely capitulate to NY. To me, it makes sense to give them priority for the time being. Granted, maybe the models say that NY is a lost cause. If so, then the President needs to say it. He'll be criticized and all that but he needs to deal with it because it's his job to lead. However, that doesn't appear to be the case since Trump's team agrees with Cuomo in terms of need.
That's a completely unrealistic expectation. Say in 2 weeks there are new outbreaks in other metros, and there are far too few ventilators to cover the entire country. Do you seriously think that the federal government can then step in and say:
Quote
"Dear NY, you currently got 25k vents, but according to our rationing, you're only entitled to 15k. So please unplug 10k patients of yours who are currently being kept alive by them and send the vents back asap. If you need extra crematory capacity to deal with these 10k extra deaths, the army can assist with the transport of the corpses."
Every metro will HODL to its ventilators, no matter how unfair this might be to those who come late to the party - and it will be politically unfeasible to demand them back as part of a national rationing scheme.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 29 2020 10:10pm