There are two things to note about this CNN story about the administration's alleged efforts to replenish the Strategic National Stockpile in anticipation of a second, potentially larger, COVID-19 wave hitting the United States at the end of summer. The first is that there are very few details about what that effort actually entails. The second is that the CNN story relies almost exclusively on anonymous officials to describe it. There is a "senior Health and Human Services official," and a "source familiar," and not much else.
Restocking medical equipment, including masks, is of vital importance in the coming weeks. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence when nobody in the administration is willing to put their own name to the descriptions of how it's going.
What we do know: Apparently, the push is to replenish the stockpile to a level that can support a 90-day outbreak. Apparently, that's defined as "the worst 30 days for the whole country" so far, multiplied by three. It will take until October to get there, meaning if multiple states again begin running out of supplies all at once in, say, July, everything goes to hell. We know that the projections for how much of each item we will need to get us through a full winter (rather than just 90 days) are perhaps not terribly robust: CNN notes that projections for needed "surgical masks and gowns" have only been made "up to July."
Oh, and we know the stockpile will include "pharmaceuticals," but it's not clear how much of that bit might consist of, say, the latest quack pills demanded by administration higher-ups. Let's just sail right on by that one without looking, shall we?
So the basics of what we know are that the Trump administration and its task force—which has seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth and which to be honest may not even be meeting, judging from task force leader Vice President Mike Pence's staggering public ignorance about even the most basic pandemic data—is aware of the likely resurgence of the pandemic later in the year, but still doesn't appear to be moving with much haste. There have been no further invocations of the Defense Production Act, for example; the orders to replenish the stockpile are taking place through the usual channels. Or aren't. Or maybe Jared Kushner is still in charge; we don't really know.
Even more alarming: There is still no public administration concern over half of U.S. states currently seeing pandemic spread, with skyrocketing new cases in Arizona, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and other states as we speak. As intensive care units in some states begin to approach capacity, there's a surprising lack of concern from state and federal officials about what happens after capacity is exceeded—despite New York City providing grim images of what that looks like.
Preparing for a second wave to hit in October is all fine and good, but the curves on the little charts suggest things are about to get very bad several months sooner than that. What's the plan for, say, two weeks from now?
None of this bodes well. There's no particular reason to believe that Pence and the others have suddenly gotten the fear of God put into them after the deaths of 120,000 Americans; if anything, the Trump-Pence-Kudlow-etc. pretenses at normality have been expanding. The efforts to replenish the national stockpile represents an acknowledgement that the pandemic not only isn't over, but is likely to get much worse. The government should be broadcasting that warning to the public using every means necessary so that the public is aware of what's coming, but once again the administration has decided that pretending everything is fine is a more pleasing political move than trying to save American lives.