8 ms·

US Hospitals say feds are seizing masks and other coronavirus supplies

113 points by notRobot 7y ago

alextheparrot 7y ago
Just tired of this all... the whole handling of this has been insanely incompetent, especially at the federal level
- earthtourist 7y ago
  No question it's been suboptimal but "insanely incompetent" seems a stretch. The most logical comparison would be to other similar countries. The U.S. handling seems to have been much better than UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Iran. Similar to Denmark, Austria, Germany, etc. South Korea and China seem to be doing well but if they don't achieve herd immunity, and other states do, they might end up prolonging their pain significantly. Although they'll probably be better off because they'll have time to prepare and benefit from medical advances. It's hard to judge while we're in the middle of this. The demographics and cultural habits probably play a big role. The reports generated after this is all over will tell us who did what well. I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally.
  - ianleeclark 7y ago
    > I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally. Why are you comparing globally? It's the wealthiest nation, always brags about itself being #1, and is the global hegemon, yet we're supposed to compare it to it's satellite states.
  - ShorsHammer 7y ago
    I have a lot of friends across the planet and everyone seems to think they are handling it better than others, when provided with proof otherwise they have a toolkit of responses to murky the waters. The US response has been utterly terrible. For a government that spends far more per person on healthcare it's absolutely shocking. This isn't including private/insurance payments. Completely dropped the ball and the whole world is watching you do it. Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en
    - foobarbazetc 7y ago
      Once you come to understand that the federal US response has nothing to do with health or saving lives and everything to do with various people lining their pockets it makes more sense. At least California (and more specifically, the Bay Area) seem to be on top of it.
    - swilliamsio 7y ago
      >Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en I found this map breaks down the case numbers with a higher level of detail https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?utm_name=iossmf#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
    - earthtourist 7y ago
      I'm basing my comments on data: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ In what way did the U.S. "completely drop the ball"? As far as I can tell there are two things that could have been done better: 1. Much more funding for the National Stockpile of PPE and ventilators. 2. An early attempt to do a lock down. Testing could have been done faster, but given that no attempt was made at containment, this likely would not have made any difference. It may have made things worse in some cases. How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Hospital ships sent to hot spots? Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? The U.S. has done a reasonably competent job as far as I can tell. The U.S. has a very good expert leading the federal response, in Dr. Fauci. How many countries have such an expert in charge of their response?
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Testing could have been done faster Testing could have been done at all, period. Until ~two weeks ago, US hasn't been doing any meaningful testing; courtesy of a) FDA/CDC bureaucracy boondoggle, and b) both state and federal governments still thinking "it's just a flu". > no attempt was made at containment And why is that? > would not have made any difference Monitoring hotspots as they develop would vastly improve the ability to control the spread. Perhaps social distancing measures would've started earlier. > How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? You mean the one that's being made by seizing PPEs earmarked for hospitals? > How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Everyone who has a cargo plane or can charter one. > Hospital ships sent to hot spots? It's just a moving hospital. > Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? Everyone has their version of a field hospital. > An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? CDC was even more impotent in this case than WHO. > The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? Strangely not used when it mattered. -- The rest of the world has been watching US response for almost two months now. It's hard to see it as anything but the worst in the entire Western world.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    What make you think that US's handling has been better than most European countries? The situation looks worse to me.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      > The situation looks worse to me. What matters is numbers, not how things "look".
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        And US numbers look really, really bad compared to Europe.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        loopz 7y ago
        To be fair, compare US to 1/2 of Europe. So we won't know until first wave breaks.
        SnowProblem 7y ago
        Do they? Take the 5 major countries in western Europe - UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Together they have ~325M people, which is about the size of the US. Both total cases and total deaths are higher than US. Total deaths is 4x worse. What numbers are you looking at?
        NickNameNick 7y ago
        All the numbers will double every 3.5 days if not properly controlled. Give it a week and see how close the US is to overtaking Europe.
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        Yes, and if I look at the numbers it does look worse to me. New York has a population of 20 million and it currently has a number of dead comparable to the UK with a population of 67 million, for example. New Jersey seems to fare worse than Switzerland with a comparable population, for another example.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    The handling in the UK was bungled as well. But most of the countries we are doing better than had community spread much earlier than us and we had the giant advantage of seeing what happened in Italy and preparing. I think if community spread had started as early as in the U.S. as those countries I think we'd be in a much worse spot than many of them.
    - earthtourist 7y ago
      Everyone knew what was happening in China. The starting line was the same for all countries. I became 100% sure we were in for a hospital-overrunning pandemic by mid-January. I can tell because that's when I started emailing friends/family telling them to stock up for a quarantine.
      - JamesBarney 7y ago
        If you assume everyone had the same starting line then that makes the u.s. look even worse because we still haven't locked down as hard as necessary to slow down the virus.
- prox 7y ago
  This is the perfect example why protest voting (voting for someone because you are against something - the other party, the establishment) is so dangerous. You should only vote if are truly and in favour of and see the good reasoning of someone’s ideas and who has shown a good track record. Voting out of emotion to stick it to the other team is like stabbing yourself with a dagger. > Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    I'm not sure what the solution is and I'm certainly no fan of Trump but I think his rise is strongly related to things being so bad they provoke protest votes. There has been American ruling for a long time, certainly the period we might now call the good times. IE, once they did an adequate job. If there's a cynical nihilism among the voters, the willingness of the broad political class to provoke this feeling has to get a lot of blame.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      It's complicated, but two pretty straightforward solutions come to mind. * Implement PR-STV voting * Abolish the electoral college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote Imagine voting in order of preference and having it count. PR-STV is damn near magical. It means you can vote for the person you _really want_ (so your super lefty communist or your right-wing neonazi, if that's your jam) but ALSO say "well if they don't win I want someone who's at least basically competent" - and your vote is allocated in the most effective manner. In some cases even if your #1 _does_ win the surplus can go to the next candidate, useful in elections where there's more than one winner (county councils, etc.) Imgine if the GOP primary had been one person saying "Well I like Kasich, Rubio, Jeb" and the other had been "Well I like Jeb, Rubio, Kasich" in that order - Rubio wins. Instead we get the ones who pay any attention splitting as above and the masses who do stuff besides follow politics voting for Trump. But it gets better! This affects behaviour. Right now, the republicans know there isn't a chance in hell of getting my vote so they don't even try. If they knew they _might_ get a 3rd or 4th preference out of me, they might at least go for it. I can imagine, say, voting Sanders->Biden->Hypothetical Lincoln Chafee or John McCain or whatever. I'm not a huge fan of either of my lower preferences, but they seem(ed) like decent people with whom my differences are a matter of policy, and would be VASTLY preferable to what we have now.
- jfnixon 7y ago
  Yeah, if only we were more like the EU, where the top scientist working on this problem (checks notes) just resigned due to all the political infighting. Why can't we be more like... oh, wait.
  - alextheparrot 7y ago
    Super fair comment — though I’ve been trying to refrain from the comparative approach (Two incompetent responses does not make the one I directly experience “better”). There’s an underlying hope that the US is a great nation, or could display the characteristics of one at least. The lack of unity displayed between the states and federal government leaves me less convinced of this. My entire life I’ve been told America was great, but all I’ve seen is sand turned to glassy mirrors inside explosive crucibles. It is easy to hate our reflection, and even harder to realise we don’t seem willing to change it.
    - malandrew 7y ago
      If you want unity, you need to vote for candidates that only pursue policies that an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with. Right now however Americans are mostly voting for candidates that pursue policies that half of Americans will agree strongly with and half will disagree strongly with. Moving the locus of policy making away from Washington DC and towards state legislatures would be a good thing since the policies would largely impact populations where the overwhelming majority agrees with the policies.
      - alextheparrot 7y ago
        Fifty ways of doing something isn’t an American union, just as the Treaty of Verdun didn’t form Germany. To add to the initial commentary, when the state governments and federal government are fighting each other, it shows a lack of unity. I’m not asking for a hegemonic unity where we all think the similar things for it to be enacted nationally, but instead for us to just have higher guiding principles that can align a nation in common action, politics irrespective.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
In theory it makes sense: Hospital in New Mexico has 2 million masks, while in NY they have none. Being an emergency that can and should be done. I said in theory...
- jdironman 7y ago
  As long as the place they are procuring them from is replenished.
- earthtourist 7y ago
  Why not in practice? One of the positive features of this pandemic is that the infection is peaking at different times across cities. That means it should be possible to surge PPE/ventilators/personnel to the hot spots, and shift those resources over time. Anyone who disagrees with this strategy should suggest an alternative. Allowing life-saving supplies to sit unused in hospital stockpiles while people die seems like a pretty stupid alternative.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Hotspots are not getting excess of supplies. The stuff goes to places politically aligned with president. The same federal government that said few days ago that "The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use" The same federal government that claimed governors should find their own supplies. The same federal government that gives masks to private companies and then have countries outbid each other for them.
    - earthtourist 7y ago
      You're espousing an unfounded conspiracy theory based on a very forced interpretation of one person's offhanded remark. Instantly disprovable with facts: 1. NY is not politically aligned with Trump in the least. They have received a huge amount of federal support. 2. Los Angeles is not politically aligned with Trump, they have also received significant federal support. This kind of intellectual dishonesty among the anti-Trump is as shocking as Trump's own level of intellectual dishonesty.
CalRobert 7y ago
How long can the federal government be actively opposed to the interests of states before the whole thing crumbles? At some point the conflict would manifest itself as a reduced quality of life I'd think?
- CalRobert 7y ago
  I worry my comment wasn't substantive, but in this case I refer specifically to confiscation of _medical supplies_ during a _pandemic_. It disincentivizes being a well prepared or resourceful organization if your stuff will get taken anyway. When do those disincentives break the whole system?
  - op03 7y ago
    You have to just remind yourself what signals come in during a crisis (esp new kinds people aren't trained for) takes a while to make sense off. Nothing will make sense initially. Even for decision makers up and down the hierarchy. Most of the time people, even responsible people with good intent, have no clue what the right move is. But they have to make moves for all kinds of reasons. And problems compound. It takes time for mistakes to surface and unwind things. So give it time.
    - op00to 7y ago
      Fuck that. The federal government is stealing PPE from NYC to “own the libs”. This is not ok.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      " people, even responsible people with good intent" True, but also true for irresponsible people with malicious intent, and those benefit massively from confusion and opacity.
    - true_religion 7y ago
      Assuming good intent only works if you trust the top decision makers to foster that kind of organizational culture. Unfortunately, in the US, we have a president who has burned most of his bridges, and has lost a lot of “benefit of the doubt”. And remember is not a dual choice between malice and good. The administration could simply be incompetent, obsessed with control, and afraid to look weak by having states take decisions on their own.
mschuster91 7y ago
Follow the money should be the clue here to why this happens. It's a clever plot IMO - states and hospitals pay for supplies, feds seize them, feds redistribute them to other states - for payment or political favors (i.e. praising Trump on Twitter), probably.
ianleeclark 7y ago
It's an interesting combination considering that states can't rely on federal stockpiles, either. It's a failed state at some point and we may well be accelerating to that point.
foobarbazetc 7y ago
Trump and his minions have to get their cut.
MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
"But the agency has refused to provide any details about how these determinations are made or why it is choosing to seize some supply orders and not others. Administration officials also will not say what supplies are going to what states." This seems incredibly negligent at best. If they're afraid of being accused of being partial, transparency about the rules and procedures are essential. They way they handle it now will only stoke the fire of mistrust and conspiracy theories. How can a government be this inept?
- ztjio 7y ago
  A great deal of deliberate effort has been put into making it this inept, have you not been watching? A common tactic by despots is to eliminate anyone who will disagree with them, and when the despot has an IQ of 25 there are not going to be many left who can function as adults let alone in critical roles at the top of the command chain.
  - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
    IDK, this has just been the result of the "small government" doctrine. Which in itself isn't wrong, its just insufficient - it should be "effective government". At this point, it is every american's job to change that narrative.
- supercollision 7y ago
  100% serious, not a low-effort political comment: I don't think they're at all afraid of being accused of being partial. Over the last few years, one of the things that has bothered me the most is that the strategy of saying "fake news" or "bad journalist" (for males) or "nasty question" (for women) and proceeding full steam ahead is proving to be remarkably effective. There is zero accountability.
  - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
    > I don't think they're at all afraid of being accused of being partial. This rings true.
mdasen 7y ago
https://www.universalhub.com/2020/baker-got-krafts-involved-getting-those-masks-try https://www.universalhub.com/2020/baker-got-krafts-involved-... The Feds seized 3M masks that Massachusetts purchased. The governor found a supplier to get more masks and had the Patriots (football team) fly their jet to China to pick them up to avoid seizure. Massachusetts has transported 300,000 masks from that mission to NYC under state police escort: https://www.masslive.com/patriots/2020/04/coronavirus-response-shipment-of-300000-masks-from-new-england-patriots-plane-en-route-to-new-york-city-with-massachusetts-state-police-as-its-escort.html https://www.masslive.com/patriots/2020/04/coronavirus-respon...
- andrelaszlo 7y ago
  3M as in the mask manufacturer or as in 3E6? :D
  - supercollision 7y ago
    from the article, 3 million masks.
101404 7y ago
I don't get it. How long can it take it build machines that produce masks? It's been weeks with this shortage. By now, there should be some production lines that spit out a couple of million a day off these things.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  Nobody is willing to pay market rates for masks. There was a story about this a couple days ago. It’s really absurd how many trillions are being wasted on a shutdown but hospitals don’t have the capability to buy masks.
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    Yeah, the Feds actions here sound terrible but there have been a whole bunch of stories of hospitals themselves being a shit of unwillingness to buy and unwillingness to use masks. The problem is the Fed should be competent enough to centralize the process but they seem to have made themselves just one more part of the mess.
  - 101404 7y ago
    Even more absurd: if every person was legally required to wear a mask in public, the shutdown could be far less strict and many businesses could open again.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  With my underwater basket weaving degree that I want the government to forgive my student debt on? A long time.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > How long can it take it build machines that produce masks? Depends on the masks. Surgical masks are material-constrained. N95 masks require manufacturing using specialized and very precise machines, which are themselves built in... guess where. China. This pandemic hit the world in precisely the best way to disrupt the global supply chains.
JohnTHaller 7y ago
You can always buy new masks from the 3-week old companies set up by Republican fundraisers: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/republican-fundraiser-company-coronavirus-152184 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/republican-fundrais...
jfnixon 7y ago
Wait, wait, you mean we shouldn't have an all-powerful, top down, one-size-fits-all response? DC doesn't know best for everyone? Local decisions are better for a diverse nation with many differing communities? Why next thing, you'll be talking about the labs of democracy, where we try different responses to see what works rather than bet it all on a single plan.
pulisse 7y ago
> [A FEMA rep] said the agency factors in the populations of states and major metropolitan areas and the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in various locales. [...] But the agency has refused to provide any details about how these determinations are made or why it is choosing to seize some supply orders and not others. Administration officials also will not say what supplies are going to what states. What possible reason could there be for distribution not to be transparent?
- buzzdenver 7y ago
  The usual reason: there are factors taken into account that the Federal Government would not want you to see. For example whether it is a Rep or Dem state, or if there is a close election coming up for governor or senate.
AKifer 7y ago
Just yesterday, reading these lines in Atlas Shrugged: ... said Scudder. "When the masses are destitute and yet there are good available, its idiotic to expect people to be stopped by some scrap of paper called a property deed. property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn't they ?" "They should" said Claude Slagenhop. "They need it. Need is the only consideration. If people are in need, we've got to seize things first and talk about it afterwards." And that was written 2/3 a century ago.
- Simulacra 7y ago
  "The proposal which they passed was known as the "Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule." When they voted for it, the members of the National Alliance of Railroads sat in a large hall in the deepening twilight of a late autumn evening and did not look at one another."

113 points by notRobot 7y ago

alextheparrot 7y ago

Just tired of this all... the whole handling of this has been insanely incompetent, especially at the federal level

earthtourist 7y ago
No question it's been suboptimal but "insanely incompetent" seems a stretch. The most logical comparison would be to other similar countries. The U.S. handling seems to have been much better than UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Iran. Similar to Denmark, Austria, Germany, etc. South Korea and China seem to be doing well but if they don't achieve herd immunity, and other states do, they might end up prolonging their pain significantly. Although they'll probably be better off because they'll have time to prepare and benefit from medical advances. It's hard to judge while we're in the middle of this. The demographics and cultural habits probably play a big role. The reports generated after this is all over will tell us who did what well. I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally.
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally. Why are you comparing globally? It's the wealthiest nation, always brags about itself being #1, and is the global hegemon, yet we're supposed to compare it to it's satellite states.
- ShorsHammer 7y ago
  I have a lot of friends across the planet and everyone seems to think they are handling it better than others, when provided with proof otherwise they have a toolkit of responses to murky the waters. The US response has been utterly terrible. For a government that spends far more per person on healthcare it's absolutely shocking. This isn't including private/insurance payments. Completely dropped the ball and the whole world is watching you do it. Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en
  - foobarbazetc 7y ago
    Once you come to understand that the federal US response has nothing to do with health or saving lives and everything to do with various people lining their pockets it makes more sense. At least California (and more specifically, the Bay Area) seem to be on top of it.
  - swilliamsio 7y ago
    >Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en I found this map breaks down the case numbers with a higher level of detail https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?utm_name=iossmf#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
  - earthtourist 7y ago
    I'm basing my comments on data: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ In what way did the U.S. "completely drop the ball"? As far as I can tell there are two things that could have been done better: 1. Much more funding for the National Stockpile of PPE and ventilators. 2. An early attempt to do a lock down. Testing could have been done faster, but given that no attempt was made at containment, this likely would not have made any difference. It may have made things worse in some cases. How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Hospital ships sent to hot spots? Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? The U.S. has done a reasonably competent job as far as I can tell. The U.S. has a very good expert leading the federal response, in Dr. Fauci. How many countries have such an expert in charge of their response?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Testing could have been done faster Testing could have been done at all, period. Until ~two weeks ago, US hasn't been doing any meaningful testing; courtesy of a) FDA/CDC bureaucracy boondoggle, and b) both state and federal governments still thinking "it's just a flu". > no attempt was made at containment And why is that? > would not have made any difference Monitoring hotspots as they develop would vastly improve the ability to control the spread. Perhaps social distancing measures would've started earlier. > How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? You mean the one that's being made by seizing PPEs earmarked for hospitals? > How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Everyone who has a cargo plane or can charter one. > Hospital ships sent to hot spots? It's just a moving hospital. > Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? Everyone has their version of a field hospital. > An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? CDC was even more impotent in this case than WHO. > The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? Strangely not used when it mattered. -- The rest of the world has been watching US response for almost two months now. It's hard to see it as anything but the worst in the entire Western world.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  What make you think that US's handling has been better than most European countries? The situation looks worse to me.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    > The situation looks worse to me. What matters is numbers, not how things "look".
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      And US numbers look really, really bad compared to Europe.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - loopz 7y ago
        To be fair, compare US to 1/2 of Europe. So we won't know until first wave breaks.
      - SnowProblem 7y ago
        Do they? Take the 5 major countries in western Europe - UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Together they have ~325M people, which is about the size of the US. Both total cases and total deaths are higher than US. Total deaths is 4x worse. What numbers are you looking at?
        NickNameNick 7y ago
        All the numbers will double every 3.5 days if not properly controlled. Give it a week and see how close the US is to overtaking Europe.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      Yes, and if I look at the numbers it does look worse to me. New York has a population of 20 million and it currently has a number of dead comparable to the UK with a population of 67 million, for example. New Jersey seems to fare worse than Switzerland with a comparable population, for another example.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  The handling in the UK was bungled as well. But most of the countries we are doing better than had community spread much earlier than us and we had the giant advantage of seeing what happened in Italy and preparing. I think if community spread had started as early as in the U.S. as those countries I think we'd be in a much worse spot than many of them.
  - earthtourist 7y ago
    Everyone knew what was happening in China. The starting line was the same for all countries. I became 100% sure we were in for a hospital-overrunning pandemic by mid-January. I can tell because that's when I started emailing friends/family telling them to stock up for a quarantine.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      If you assume everyone had the same starting line then that makes the u.s. look even worse because we still haven't locked down as hard as necessary to slow down the virus.
prox 7y ago
This is the perfect example why protest voting (voting for someone because you are against something - the other party, the establishment) is so dangerous. You should only vote if are truly and in favour of and see the good reasoning of someone’s ideas and who has shown a good track record. Voting out of emotion to stick it to the other team is like stabbing yourself with a dagger. > Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  I'm not sure what the solution is and I'm certainly no fan of Trump but I think his rise is strongly related to things being so bad they provoke protest votes. There has been American ruling for a long time, certainly the period we might now call the good times. IE, once they did an adequate job. If there's a cynical nihilism among the voters, the willingness of the broad political class to provoke this feeling has to get a lot of blame.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    It's complicated, but two pretty straightforward solutions come to mind. * Implement PR-STV voting * Abolish the electoral college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote Imagine voting in order of preference and having it count. PR-STV is damn near magical. It means you can vote for the person you _really want_ (so your super lefty communist or your right-wing neonazi, if that's your jam) but ALSO say "well if they don't win I want someone who's at least basically competent" - and your vote is allocated in the most effective manner. In some cases even if your #1 _does_ win the surplus can go to the next candidate, useful in elections where there's more than one winner (county councils, etc.) Imgine if the GOP primary had been one person saying "Well I like Kasich, Rubio, Jeb" and the other had been "Well I like Jeb, Rubio, Kasich" in that order - Rubio wins. Instead we get the ones who pay any attention splitting as above and the masses who do stuff besides follow politics voting for Trump. But it gets better! This affects behaviour. Right now, the republicans know there isn't a chance in hell of getting my vote so they don't even try. If they knew they _might_ get a 3rd or 4th preference out of me, they might at least go for it. I can imagine, say, voting Sanders->Biden->Hypothetical Lincoln Chafee or John McCain or whatever. I'm not a huge fan of either of my lower preferences, but they seem(ed) like decent people with whom my differences are a matter of policy, and would be VASTLY preferable to what we have now.
jfnixon 7y ago
Yeah, if only we were more like the EU, where the top scientist working on this problem (checks notes) just resigned due to all the political infighting. Why can't we be more like... oh, wait.
- alextheparrot 7y ago
  Super fair comment — though I’ve been trying to refrain from the comparative approach (Two incompetent responses does not make the one I directly experience “better”). There’s an underlying hope that the US is a great nation, or could display the characteristics of one at least. The lack of unity displayed between the states and federal government leaves me less convinced of this. My entire life I’ve been told America was great, but all I’ve seen is sand turned to glassy mirrors inside explosive crucibles. It is easy to hate our reflection, and even harder to realise we don’t seem willing to change it.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    If you want unity, you need to vote for candidates that only pursue policies that an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with. Right now however Americans are mostly voting for candidates that pursue policies that half of Americans will agree strongly with and half will disagree strongly with. Moving the locus of policy making away from Washington DC and towards state legislatures would be a good thing since the policies would largely impact populations where the overwhelming majority agrees with the policies.
    - alextheparrot 7y ago
      Fifty ways of doing something isn’t an American union, just as the Treaty of Verdun didn’t form Germany. To add to the initial commentary, when the state governments and federal government are fighting each other, it shows a lack of unity. I’m not asking for a hegemonic unity where we all think the similar things for it to be enacted nationally, but instead for us to just have higher guiding principles that can align a nation in common action, politics irrespective.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

In theory it makes sense: Hospital in New Mexico has 2 million masks, while in NY they have none. Being an emergency that can and should be done. I said in theory...

jdironman 7y ago
As long as the place they are procuring them from is replenished.
earthtourist 7y ago
Why not in practice? One of the positive features of this pandemic is that the infection is peaking at different times across cities. That means it should be possible to surge PPE/ventilators/personnel to the hot spots, and shift those resources over time. Anyone who disagrees with this strategy should suggest an alternative. Allowing life-saving supplies to sit unused in hospital stockpiles while people die seems like a pretty stupid alternative.
- watwut 7y ago
  Hotspots are not getting excess of supplies. The stuff goes to places politically aligned with president. The same federal government that said few days ago that "The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use" The same federal government that claimed governors should find their own supplies. The same federal government that gives masks to private companies and then have countries outbid each other for them.
  - earthtourist 7y ago
    You're espousing an unfounded conspiracy theory based on a very forced interpretation of one person's offhanded remark. Instantly disprovable with facts: 1. NY is not politically aligned with Trump in the least. They have received a huge amount of federal support. 2. Los Angeles is not politically aligned with Trump, they have also received significant federal support. This kind of intellectual dishonesty among the anti-Trump is as shocking as Trump's own level of intellectual dishonesty.

CalRobert 7y ago

How long can the federal government be actively opposed to the interests of states before the whole thing crumbles? At some point the conflict would manifest itself as a reduced quality of life I'd think?

CalRobert 7y ago
I worry my comment wasn't substantive, but in this case I refer specifically to confiscation of _medical supplies_ during a _pandemic_. It disincentivizes being a well prepared or resourceful organization if your stuff will get taken anyway. When do those disincentives break the whole system?
- op03 7y ago
  You have to just remind yourself what signals come in during a crisis (esp new kinds people aren't trained for) takes a while to make sense off. Nothing will make sense initially. Even for decision makers up and down the hierarchy. Most of the time people, even responsible people with good intent, have no clue what the right move is. But they have to make moves for all kinds of reasons. And problems compound. It takes time for mistakes to surface and unwind things. So give it time.
  - op00to 7y ago
    Fuck that. The federal government is stealing PPE from NYC to “own the libs”. This is not ok.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    " people, even responsible people with good intent" True, but also true for irresponsible people with malicious intent, and those benefit massively from confusion and opacity.
  - true_religion 7y ago
    Assuming good intent only works if you trust the top decision makers to foster that kind of organizational culture. Unfortunately, in the US, we have a president who has burned most of his bridges, and has lost a lot of “benefit of the doubt”. And remember is not a dual choice between malice and good. The administration could simply be incompetent, obsessed with control, and afraid to look weak by having states take decisions on their own.

mschuster91 7y ago

Follow the money should be the clue here to why this happens. It's a clever plot IMO - states and hospitals pay for supplies, feds seize them, feds redistribute them to other states - for payment or political favors (i.e. praising Trump on Twitter), probably.

ianleeclark 7y ago

It's an interesting combination considering that states can't rely on federal stockpiles, either. It's a failed state at some point and we may well be accelerating to that point.

foobarbazetc 7y ago

Trump and his minions have to get their cut.

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago

"But the agency has refused to provide any details about how these determinations are made or why it is choosing to seize some supply orders and not others. Administration officials also will not say what supplies are going to what states." This seems incredibly negligent at best. If they're afraid of being accused of being partial, transparency about the rules and procedures are essential. They way they handle it now will only stoke the fire of mistrust and conspiracy theories. How can a government be this inept?

ztjio 7y ago
A great deal of deliberate effort has been put into making it this inept, have you not been watching? A common tactic by despots is to eliminate anyone who will disagree with them, and when the despot has an IQ of 25 there are not going to be many left who can function as adults let alone in critical roles at the top of the command chain.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  IDK, this has just been the result of the "small government" doctrine. Which in itself isn't wrong, its just insufficient - it should be "effective government". At this point, it is every american's job to change that narrative.
supercollision 7y ago
100% serious, not a low-effort political comment: I don't think they're at all afraid of being accused of being partial. Over the last few years, one of the things that has bothered me the most is that the strategy of saying "fake news" or "bad journalist" (for males) or "nasty question" (for women) and proceeding full steam ahead is proving to be remarkably effective. There is zero accountability.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  > I don't think they're at all afraid of being accused of being partial. This rings true.

mdasen 7y ago

https://www.universalhub.com/2020/baker-got-krafts-involved-getting-those-masks-try https://www.universalhub.com/2020/baker-got-krafts-involved-... The Feds seized 3M masks that Massachusetts purchased. The governor found a supplier to get more masks and had the Patriots (football team) fly their jet to China to pick them up to avoid seizure. Massachusetts has transported 300,000 masks from that mission to NYC under state police escort: https://www.masslive.com/patriots/2020/04/coronavirus-response-shipment-of-300000-masks-from-new-england-patriots-plane-en-route-to-new-york-city-with-massachusetts-state-police-as-its-escort.html https://www.masslive.com/patriots/2020/04/coronavirus-respon...

andrelaszlo 7y ago
3M as in the mask manufacturer or as in 3E6? :D
- supercollision 7y ago
  from the article, 3 million masks.

101404 7y ago

I don't get it. How long can it take it build machines that produce masks? It's been weeks with this shortage. By now, there should be some production lines that spit out a couple of million a day off these things.

akvadrako 7y ago
Nobody is willing to pay market rates for masks. There was a story about this a couple days ago. It’s really absurd how many trillions are being wasted on a shutdown but hospitals don’t have the capability to buy masks.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  Yeah, the Feds actions here sound terrible but there have been a whole bunch of stories of hospitals themselves being a shit of unwillingness to buy and unwillingness to use masks. The problem is the Fed should be competent enough to centralize the process but they seem to have made themselves just one more part of the mess.
- 101404 7y ago
  Even more absurd: if every person was legally required to wear a mask in public, the shutdown could be far less strict and many businesses could open again.
koheripbal 7y ago
With my underwater basket weaving degree that I want the government to forgive my student debt on? A long time.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> How long can it take it build machines that produce masks? Depends on the masks. Surgical masks are material-constrained. N95 masks require manufacturing using specialized and very precise machines, which are themselves built in... guess where. China. This pandemic hit the world in precisely the best way to disrupt the global supply chains.

JohnTHaller 7y ago

You can always buy new masks from the 3-week old companies set up by Republican fundraisers: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/republican-fundraiser-company-coronavirus-152184 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/republican-fundrais...

jfnixon 7y ago

Wait, wait, you mean we shouldn't have an all-powerful, top down, one-size-fits-all response? DC doesn't know best for everyone? Local decisions are better for a diverse nation with many differing communities? Why next thing, you'll be talking about the labs of democracy, where we try different responses to see what works rather than bet it all on a single plan.

pulisse 7y ago

> [A FEMA rep] said the agency factors in the populations of states and major metropolitan areas and the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in various locales. [...] But the agency has refused to provide any details about how these determinations are made or why it is choosing to seize some supply orders and not others. Administration officials also will not say what supplies are going to what states. What possible reason could there be for distribution not to be transparent?

buzzdenver 7y ago
The usual reason: there are factors taken into account that the Federal Government would not want you to see. For example whether it is a Rep or Dem state, or if there is a close election coming up for governor or senate.

AKifer 7y ago

Just yesterday, reading these lines in Atlas Shrugged: ... said Scudder. "When the masses are destitute and yet there are good available, its idiotic to expect people to be stopped by some scrap of paper called a property deed. property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn't they ?" "They should" said Claude Slagenhop. "They need it. Need is the only consideration. If people are in need, we've got to seize things first and talk about it afterwards." And that was written 2/3 a century ago.

Simulacra 7y ago
"The proposal which they passed was known as the "Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule." When they voted for it, the members of the National Alliance of Railroads sat in a large hall in the deepening twilight of a late autumn evening and did not look at one another."