The greatest city in the world is teetering on the brink so its Mayor seizes the opportunity to remind us he is a useless buffoon:
Covid-19: De Blasio urges US enlistment program for doctors and nurses
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- Mayor calls for medics to be moved to places in greatest need
- New York City prepares for surge in coronavirus cases
"Enlistment program"?!? WHAT did he say?
New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has called for a national enlistment program for doctors and nurses, to handle an expected surge in coronavirus cases in New York and across the US.
“If we’re fighting a war, let’s act like we’re fighting a war,” he told reporters on Friday.
...
"...unless the military is fully mobilized and we create something we’ve never had before, which is some kind of national enlistment of medical personnel moved to the most urgent needs in the country constantly … if we don’t have that we’re going to see hospitals simply unable to handle so many people who could be saved.”
OK, that won't be happening. As a minor point, there is no time for Congress to pass the relevant legislation. As a major point, this is still America, we abandoned the draft decades ago, and we don't force people to work at gunpoint.
And how would it work? NY hospitals are short of Protective Personal Equipment. So the Feds are going to threaten to arrest some doctor in Vermont unless he gets down to NY and imperils himself by treating coronavirus patients? And if the good people of the great state of Vermont need health care down the road, NY promises to send their doctor back, unless he's sick or dead or super busy saving New Yorkers in which case, well, that's a problem for another day?
I saw a poignant story of a retired 50-ish nurse from New York. She was planning to answer Gov. Cuomo's call for volunteers but had qualms she lives with two youngsters and her elderly parents. Working with coronavirus patents all day puts her at high risk of infection; going home puts her at risk of infecting her high-risk parents.
Her intention was to respond because Duty Calls, and I applaud her fighting spirit. But I have a hard time imagining a state legislator or judge would agree to lock her up if she chose to sit this one out and take care of her mom and dad.
As a further illustration that desperate times require desperate short-sightedness, this order by Gov. Cuomo is outrageous:
Cuomo said he would sign an executive order that allows the national guard to take ventilators and personal protective equipment from institutions that don’t need them right now, and redistribute them to those that do. He said those institutions would either have their ventilators returned to them or get reimbursements. Cuomo said there may be several hundred ventilators available because of the order.
Right now, the state is fielding a daily need for about 300 additional ventilators, he said. Those ventilators, officials have repeatedly explained, make the difference between life and death.
“Am I willing to deploy the national guard and inconvenience people for several hundred lives? You’re damn right I am,” Cuomo said.
Upstate NY legislators are pushing back. I haven't studied their local budgets and planning process but I imagine some of them are thinking they spent years in investing in appropriate capacity for their town and now, at the moment of crisis, its being taken away by people who couldn't plan far enough ahead to buy hot dogs for the Fourth of July.
As to the idea that they'll will get it back if they need it - oh, stop. NYC won't start unhooking people and letting them die just to return ventilators to some upstate burg. The absence of trust makes sharing difficult and this brute expropriation outrageous.
Apparently they won't take more than 20% of the ventilators from any hospital, so the plan isn't fully insane.
Some pushback from the Rochester area upstate:
Rochester Regional Health deferred questions to Monroe County. Both County Executive Adam Bello and U.S. Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-Irondequoit, expressed concerned over Cuomo's executive order.
"While it’s reasonable to share resources across communities when available, the reality is that Monroe County’s positive cases, hospitalizations, and ventilator usage increase daily," Bello said in a statement. "We do not have excess capacity to send supplies out of the region.”
Morelle echoed those sentiments.
"Unfortunately, our regional health systems have repeatedly indicated that excess ventilator capacity does not exist at this time," Morelle offered in a statement.
Rich Azzopardi, senior advisor to Cuomo, said, "...it is essential that we all work together."
He continued, "Ventilators literally save lives. They will be returned or reimbursed to those hospitals. Moreover, when the pandemic wave hits upstate New York, the Governor will ask downstate hospitals for similar help."
I guess Gov. Cuomo's message is "tough luck".
More pushback from Erie County Republicans:
We cannot allow the state to confiscate our public health resources by force and redistribute them to New York City. The offer to pay for them only adds insult to injury. Once they are taken, we will not get them back when we need them, and clearly none are available for purchase. We want to help, but if we hit our peak while our resources are elsewhere, Erie County residents will die. We cannot let that happen.”
No trust.
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