So, Donald Trump does not believe that NYC needs about 30,000 ventilators:
Trump questions need for 30,000 ventilators in New York
According to the experts, Trump is completely wrong. To find out exactly how many ventilators would be needed for the entire U.S. to handle COVID-19, I simply had to use Google.com. I typed in the following at Google.com without quotes:
estimated amount of ventilators needed
The first listing that I received was an abstract, which I found of limited use, but the second listing was this:
United States Resource Availability for COVID-19 - SCCM
This is an estimate done by the Society of Critical Care Medicine (in other words, the experts) as to what equipment and staffing the United States actually needs to battle COVID-19. Regarding their estimated need for ventilators nationwide, we get the following:
Estimates of hospitalized patients requiring critical care and mechanical ventilation: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated in 2005 that 865,000 U.S. residents would be hospitalized during a moderate pandemic (as in the 1957 and 1968 influenza pandemics) and 9.9 million during a severe pandemic (as in the 1918 influenza pandemic).16 A recent AHA webinar on COVID-19 projected that 30% (96 million) of the U.S. population will test positive, with 5% (4.8 million) being hospitalized. Of the hospitalized patients, 40% (1.9 million) would be admitted to the ICU, and 50% of the ICU admissions (960,000) would require ventilatory support.17 Such projections, however, are gross estimates. Some assumptions underlying these projections are uncertain, and the pacing of a large outbreak would influence whether ICU resources in isolated locations or nationally are severely taxed over many months or quickly overwhelmed over a shorter period. Additionally, COVID-19 patients may remain mechanically ventilated for indeterminate periods of time, with some developing prolonged or chronic critical illness requiring the extended use of ICU beds, ventilators, supplies, and trained clinicians.
So, the SCCM estimated that the ventilator need nationwide to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic is 960,000 ventilators. OK, what fraction of those 960,000 ventilators would be needed by say, New York City, for example? To get that figure we simply divide the estimated population of New York City (8.623 million in 2017) by the estimated total population of the U.S. (327.2 million in 2018) and multiply that number by 960,000:
(8.623 million/327.2 million) times 960,000 ventilators nationwide =
.02635 times 960,000 =
about 25,300 ventilators
This is why Governor Cuomo is saying he needs 30,000 ventilators—because he needs about 25,000 just for New York City alone. Every region of the country can estimate how many ventilators they need by dividing a given area’s population by the population of America and then multiplying it by 960,000. This also means that the entire United States needs about 960,000 ventilators. So, how many ventilators does the U.S. have currently?:
Supply of mechanical ventilators in U.S. acute care hospitals: Based on a 2009 survey of AHA hospitals, U.S. acute care hospitals are estimated to own approximately 62,000 full-featured mechanical ventilators.10,11 Approximately 46% of these can be used to ventilate pediatric and neonatal patients. Additionally, some hospitals keep older models for emergency purposes. Older models, which are not full featured but may provide basic functions, add an additional 98,738 ventilators to the U.S. supply.10 The older devices include 22,976 noninvasive ventilators, 32,668 automatic resuscitators, and 8567 continuous positive airway pressure units.
OK, so adding the 62,000 newer ventilators to the 98,738 older ventilators gives us 160,738 ventilators. That’s about 800,000 ventilators short of the 960,00 the U.S. needs. This means that the U.S. needs to make a heck of a lot more ventilators. This is why it is crazy that the Trump administration is balking over spending a billion dollars for 80,000 ventilators. Trump has said that he wants American citizens to be working. If he wants people working, the first thing they should begin work on are those things that deal with the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).
Ventilator prices tend to range from $5,000.00 to $50,000.00. A deal where 80,000 ventilators cost $1 billion is just $12,500.00 per ventilators—right in the normal price range. Congress is about to approve a two trillion dollar package just to keep the economy going, and that is two thousand times as much as the one billion dollars needed for the 80,000 ventilators. Trump is being penny wise and pound foolish.