On Page 30 the Health Department report on ventilator allocation guidelines states: “during a severe influenza pandemic, there is likely to be a projected shortfall of ventilators (-15,783) during peak week demand.”
But that’s not all. At the beginning of that report the New York State Health Commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker wrote: “Dear New Yorkers, Protecting the health and well-being of New Yorkers is a core objective of the Department of Health. During flu season, we are reminded that pandemic influenza is a foreseeable threat, one that we cannot ignore. In light of this possibility, the Department is taking steps to prepare for a pandemic and to limit the loss of life and other negative consequences.
“As part of our emergency preparedness efforts, the Department, together with the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, is releasing the 2015 Ventilator Allocation Guidelines, which provide an ethical, clinical, and legal framework to assist health care providers and the general public in the event of a severe influenza pandemic…”
Where was the response from the governor? Where was the sense of urgency after such an explicit warning?
Gov. Cuomo refused to act. He did not listen. He bought zero ventilators. The cost to purchase the needed ventilators was only 0.4 percent of the 2015-2016 state budget.
Instead of buying life-saving ventilators, Cuomo wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on failed projects, like $750 million on a failed solar panel factory, $90 million on a partnership with a California light bulb company that went nowhere, and $600 million on a computer chip factory that went bust.
I saw this picture today and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Wow. This was almost the exact number the New York Health Department report predicted would be needed.
And it gets worse, because now Cuomo is actually thanking and praising the Chinese government! Look at this tweet:
Andrew Cuomo
✔@NYGovCuomo
We finally got some good news today.
The Chinese government helped facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators that will arrive in JFK today.
I thank the Chinese government, Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, the Jack Ma Foundation, the Tsai Foundation and Consul General Huang.
Cuomo is thanking the Chinese government that lied to the entire world about the coronavirus from the start.
Cuomo is “all talk no action” because he loves to show up for photo ops at various emergency hospitals that the federal government constructed like the Javits Center and the 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort.
