Since before the pyramids were built, good generals have sent their soldiers into battle equipped with the best available arms and armor to take on the enemy and defend themselves. Our “wartime president,” as Donald J. Trump has now glibly titled himself, has nothing in common with good generals. In the past few days, social and other media have spread the word that, despite being two months into this crisis, front-line soldiers risking their own lives in the battle to save people afflicted with the coronavirus are still ill-equipped, with hospitals running out of supplies of PPE, personal protection equipment. Not enough gloves, or gowns, or the special masks that protect these physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers from getting the virus themselves.
Not having this protection obviously means they can catch the virus or suspect they may have. To avoid possibly spreading the virus to their colleagues and patients with other health issues, they must be taken out of the fight and quarantined for 14 days right when they are most needed. Hundreds of healthcare workers have already been sidelined in this way. The good news is that there are also many stories, like that tweeted by Esther Choo above, of people donating the desperately needed equipment. The bad news is that such donations won’t be nearly enough when the number of cases really explodes … and that we still have a hoax of a president faking his way through his fourth year in office.
On Wednesday, the faker finally chose to sign the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that authorizes a president to force civilian businesses to sign contracts to produce certain goods in the interests of national security. A step in the right direction, it seemed for a minute. But after signing, Trump said he would only "invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.” So, once again, with infections and the death toll on the rise, when he should be all-in, getting four hours of sleep a night, and cracking the whip on his staff to make sure those healthcare soldiers get what they need without further delays, the man shows that he still doesn’t get it.
This is not a drill. This is not an episode of The Apprentice with multiple takes until he gets it right.
Zahra Hirji and Stephanie M. Lee at Buzzfeed report that nurses and doctors they have interviewed have said they don’t have enough N95 masks used to shield themselves from the virus when caring for patients. The global demand for these masks is soaring along with the pandemic’s spread, and that’s pinched even one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions.
The upshot, according to health care workers around the country, has been a frightening shortage, further exacerbated by hoarding — and even stealing. The lack of supplies has even forced the CDC to change its guidance for medical workers. Initially the agency advised those encountering patients suspected of having COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, to wear only N95 respirators, which filter out small particles in the air. Now the CDC says workers can wear other masks too. But some doctors and nurses worry that’s not enough protection.
In fact, there are 10.5 million masks in the stockpile at the Department of Health and Human Services. But that’s a tiny fraction of the 300 million that HHS Secretary Alex Azar recently told Congress would be needed. New Jersey requested 2.8 million N95 masks from the stockpile but has only received 85,000 so far.
Jessie Hellman at The Hill cites Laura Wooster, associate executive director of public affairs at the American College of Emergency Physicians, “There are folks who say that every night they take the mask home, they spray both sides with bleach, and they hang it up to dry, and they hope that's gonna work. So it's pretty bad.”
One volunteer group at Providence St. Joseph Health in Seattle manufactured its own face shields and surgical masks out of marine-grade vinyl, tape, elastic bands, and foam strips. Homemade, but effective.
Erika Henry, a state health department official, said during a media conference call: “It's impossible to deny. We are in a global health pandemic. There are resource shortages we simply cannot fill faster than the medical supply chain can replenish." KOMO-TV reports the federal government said equipment is on the way but it hasn’t shown up yet.
Following the “advice” Trump gave governors about getting needed equipment themselves Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said, “We are in the midst of procuring a whole host of medical equipment from ventilators to masks to gloves through the private distribution system." The trouble is that a number of overseas suppliers the hospitals usually depend on have been shut down or their exports cut off in countries fighting the virus.
Said Inslee, “The federal stockpile has hundreds of thousands of personal protective equipment and has been responding to our orders, but we are going to have to increase our orders fairly significantly and we need that federal stockpile to fulfill our state’s stockpile.”
Anybody who looks at the map knows that there could be, within weeks, tens of thousands of people infected in the United States. That will strain supplies past the breaking point unless action is taken promptly to ramp up production right damn now. Factories should be running night and day. There is no excuse for more wait-and-see before invoking the Defense Production Act as at least a partial solution to the equipment shortage. For two months, Trump dragged his feet, guaranteeing that the crisis would be worse. And he’s still at it.