Courtesy of the Bastrop Advertiser
April 2, 2020
By Joni Ashbrook
I agree with President Donald Trump, we’re at war with an invisible enemy. As we hunker down safe at home, I’m so grateful but concerned for those on the front lines fighting the coronavirus.
It’s bad enough they’re putting themselves at great risk, but they’re having to do it without the personal protective equipment (PPE) that’s necessary to stay healthy.
I spoke to two nurses about their shortage of supplies. One said she was given one of each PPE: one gown, one pair of goggles and one N95 mask. That mask is essential for protection against the virus.
That’s not one a day, or one a week, but one. They’re told to clean their masks daily.
Another works in a pediatric intensive care unit and said they’re “experiencing severe shortage of regular surgical masks we use everyday at the hospital.”
These nurses aren’t from New York ‒ the epicenter of the virus in the U.S. ‒ they work in Texas, where cases are still relatively low. Or, at least it looks that way because our testing ability is still abysmal.
Why is the wealthiest country in the world this unprepared after watching the virus sweep across the globe, overwhelming hospitals and killing thousands of people?
Our health care personnel has been pleading for PPE and ventilators for weeks.
A nurse died from coronavirus after working in the same New York hospital where staff posted pictures of themselves wearing trash bags as gowns drawing attention to their supply shortage. Yet we see pictures of nurses from other countries in full hazmat suits.
Two weeks ago, Trump told frantic governors to find their own life-saving equipment and said the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.”
So, governors had to bid against other states, the federal government and other nations for scarce supplies causing price gouging, hoarding and misallocation of supplies.
During his daily briefings, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been blunt in his plea for 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators for the critical patients he anticipates in the coming weeks. He claims without ventilators “people will die needlessly.”
That astonishing statement sums up Trump’s lack of understanding of the virus, and the desperate need for supplies.
In head spinning fashion, the very next day Trump finally invoked the Defense Protection Act, directing General Motors to produce life-saving ventilators, and hopefully desperately needed PPE.
The American Medical Association and governors begged him to invoke it weeks ago.
Politico obtained documents from that transition meeting, and one of those scenarios was to prepare for a “novel influenza” that health officials warned “could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918.”
The report projected “The world would be facing an impending shortage of key resources such as: antiviral drugs, personal protective equipment, other medical equipment such as ventilators.”
The report also said, “A coordinated, unified national response and message is paramount” and in a pandemic “days, even hours can matter.”
I’m praying we quickly see that “coordinated, unified national response” our country desperately needs.
