In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak one of the many disturbing aspects has been the politicizing and finger pointing made by politicians. It seems a cottage industry has erupted with state and local officials who have failed to do some of their basic duties as leaders and have tried passing the blame over to president Trump.
In the Senate Chuck Schumer has been a loud opponent of Trump’s handling in the crisis while he was holding up the virus relief spending bill in order to inject pork products. Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer spent time blaming Trump for the lack of aid for her state, until it was learned she wwas incapable of filling out the needed FEMA documents. Even the Mayor of New Orleans, when challenged on the outbreak of cases in her city following Mardi Gras, tried laying the blame of not cancelling the event in her city on the president.
Then we come to the case of New York City, where the mayor’s critiques of Trump have been especially vocal — and incompetent. Bill DeBlasio had said numerous times that the president was not delivering the needed goods to the city of New York in a timely fashion, but then it was learned the city had not even placed orders for medical supplies until well into the month of March.
Then there is the issue of ventilators. Long this has been a point of contention since New York City exploded into a coronavirus hot zone, with the mayor and Governor Andrew Cuomo both calling for the needed medial equipment to treat the mushrooming number of patients in the city and state. But it has been learned that some years ago the called-for supply of ventilators to serve as an emergency stockpile for the city was eradicated.
The initial order for New York City was cut down significantly, and then a few years ago that stockpile that remained was — sold off.
A 2006 pandemic plan warned that New York City could be short as many as 9,500 ventilators. But the city only acquired a few hundred, which were ultimately scrapped because it couldn’t afford to maintain them. https://t.co/xchUNIpogJ
— ProPublica (@propublica) April 7, 2020
So less than 10% of the announced amount of ventilators were even ordered, and those were then auctioned off in 2016. Now as the planned-for pandemic stocks were depleted the need is obvious — and the blame of course is being directed elsewhere.
Hmmm crickets from de Blasiohttps://t.co/ieUgL5rFTS
— Suze Michelini (@emilia_suze) April 7, 2020
This seems to be a conditioning derived from our press corps. These politicians should maybe change tactics – considering the way the media approval numbers are plummeting while blaming everything on the president it could be a poor strategy.
