Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps

Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - Printable Version

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Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - stupac2 - 04-25-2020

Found this in a local listserv, apparently one of the authors is a neighbor: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/political-influence-skews-trump-s-coronavirus-response-n1191236

I'm not really sure if there's one part I can pull out to quote. It's pretty long and makes a convincing case that there's political interference going on with distribution of critical supplies.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - dabigv13 - 04-25-2020

We had a big order from China that the feds stole out from under our noses. Now my hospital is out of the main form of n95s we stock, and we're on reprocessed and non standard ones.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - oregontim - 04-25-2020

(04-25-2020, 10:47 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: We had a big order from China that the feds stole out from under our noses. Now my hospital is out of the main form of n95s we stock, and we're on reprocessed and non standard ones.

Is this for real? So disturbing. I read about a case in MA where Feds took over; but how is this possible? What Feds, with what legal postures?

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - Erika - 04-25-2020

(04-25-2020, 11:09 AM)oregontim Wrote:
(04-25-2020, 10:47 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: We had a big order from China that the feds stole out from under our noses. Now my hospital is out of the main form of n95s we stock, and we're on reprocessed and non standard ones.

Is this for real? So disturbing. I read about a case in MA where Feds took over; but how is this possible? What Feds, with what legal postures?

Yes, it seems to be for real, I've read it from many sources.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-washington-seize-coronavirus-supplies

Just google "feds intercepting ppe" and you'll get a lot of credible links. Disgusting.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - dabigv13 - 04-25-2020

I'm afraid I don't know the specifics. But we have been chartering our own flights to pick up supplies direct from factories to try and reduce our exposure to this sort of interference.

Obviously many health care organizations are paying insane amounts of money to try and secure this equipment, and will need a lot of federal money to remain open throughout this pandemic. A lot of the providers in the middle and later stages of this pandemic may be working on reduced wages and retirement, and probably still without truly adequate PPE. Unclear how that may all shake out but not well is my guess.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - JustAnotherFan - 04-25-2020

(04-25-2020, 10:47 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: We had a big order from China that the feds stole out from under our noses. Now my hospital is out of the main form of n95s we stock, and we're on reprocessed and non standard ones.

If you are willing to share can you describe your hospital? is it a university hospital, part of a large network, a rural hospital?

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - UltimateCard - 04-25-2020

SF Mayor reports similar diversions
https://www.kqed.org/coronavirusliveupdates/news/11814293/breed-sfs-missing-confiscated-ppe-deliveries-frustrating

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - dabigv13 - 04-25-2020

(04-25-2020, 12:17 PM)JustAnotherFan Wrote:
(04-25-2020, 10:47 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: We had a big order from China that the feds stole out from under our noses. Now my hospital is out of the main form of n95s we stock, and we're on reprocessed and non standard ones.

If you are willing to share can you describe your hospital? is it a university hospital, part of a large network, a rural hospital?

Should probably just say a hospital in socal. But I can say that this is not a unique experience, and my colleagues in a variety of university and private hospitals have experienced similar issues.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - M T - 04-25-2020

Is ANYONE saying these aren't going to health care facilities in the US? Maybe people are thinking they're stored next to the Lost Ark of the Covenant? If that were the case, that would be very bad.

If they are being redistributed, per the law, that's unfortunate. but the law was put in place for this kind of health emergency.
Like taxes and other things our government (We, the People) does to redistribute from the haves to the have-nots, it is a bitter pill.
Personally, I think this process contributes to a sense of "Why prepare? If we tighten our belts now and stock up, the government will just seize it and give to those grasshoppers that don't prepare." But I can't deny the need for redistribution from sites with sufficient supplies to ones with insufficient supplies. (Yes, the definition of "sufficient" is definitely debatable.)

I wish the process were more transparent to show that Unknown Hospital X needed the PPE more urgently than SoCal Hospital Y, and that Hospital X was doing all it could to extend its supplies maximally. Some bureaucrat or committee is making that decision, perhaps with the wisdom of Solomon, or perhaps for lesser reasons. I expect there will be people on this board whose immediate reaction will be to believe the latter.

On a slightly related matter, here is a study of previously undetected COVID-19 in healthcare workers, and shows the numbers growing over 2 weeks.
(At the time of their positive tests, 66% had not yet shown symptoms.
I don't know if they had ongoing tests or whether these were one-time tests.
I'll note that if some group were being tested every 4 days, you'd expect nearly 100% would not have symptoms at the time of a positive test.)

Adequate PPE isn't just for protecting the patients or the staff, but is for protecting both.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - stupac2 - 04-25-2020

MT, you raise a good point. Coordinating the relief effort is exactly what the federal government should be doing. However, there seem to be a few problems here:

1) There doesn't seem to be a real coordination where supplies all funnel through the feds, and then out to those that need it. Trump at some point even explicitly said that governors were on their own for purchases. So they did that, but then it gets confiscated. You can't have it both ways.

2) Additionally, rather than buying for the nation and sending it out according to local needs, the feds seem to be sending supplies to wherever the optics are best. And I don't think this is purely a partisan thing, the article in the OP cites Maryland's governor (who's a republican) as critical of what's happening.

3) It's totally opaque. No one knows why decisions are being made, and it seems like it's hard to get official confirmation that this is even happening (all the quotes seem to be from aggrieved state/local/hospital officials, not from feds saying "oh yeah we're doing that because XYZ".) It would be one thing if we knew what was happening, but right now it seems like there's no visibility and no accountability. As you say it's easy to assume the worst, but the point the article I linked makes is that what we can see makes the worst seem most likely (I fully acknowledge that this could be an incomplete picture, which is why being clear about what's going on is so important).

It all paints a pretty troubling picture.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - Farm93 - 04-25-2020

Jared's own testimonial in a White House briefing confirmed all of this.

Someone needed PPE, called Jared and the he diverted supplies to that person.
In that same meeting he noted that he had prioritized other supplies from the national stockpile for a distributor. That distributor was then able to sell those supplies to states, cities or to international customers.

So while the intrigue and specific stories are interesting, the Trump Administration has been rather open about their willingness to use an opaque process that does not necessarily give supplies to the American locations with the greatest need.

RE: Want a mask contract or some ventilators? A White House connection helps - UltimateCard - 05-06-2020

(04-25-2020, 05:23 PM)Farm93 Wrote: Jared's own testimonial in a White House briefing confirmed all of this.

Someone needed PPE, called Jared and the he diverted supplies to that person.
In that same meeting he noted that he had prioritized other supplies from the national stockpile for a distributor. That distributor was then able to sell those supplies to states, cities or to international customers.

So while the intrigue and specific stories are interesting, the Trump Administration has been rather open about their willingness to use an opaque process that does not necessarily give supplies to the American locations with the greatest need.

An unflattering Stanford mention in this article about Kushner's volunteer procurement team:

Quote:The agency’s career staff is filled with military veterans and disaster specialists whose careers trace the history of recent American catastrophes: Katrina, Sandy, Deepwater Horizon, Irene. The volunteers, most in their 20s, had different names in their résumés: Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Google. One had graduated from college just the previous spring.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/jared-kushner-fema-coronavirus.html