The role of the federal government is to be our insurer and to eat risk. Unlike state governments, there is no balanced budget requirement. Blaming Cuomo -- ie all 50 individual states, with not only currently varying populations, but populations and incomes and risks that vary over time -- for not independently staffing up and buying equipment to be prepared against all eventualities is silly.
Second, Trump diddled for 8-12 weeks to start manufacturing things. People are screaming because the Chinese government confirmed by Dec 31 that they had cases of the virus. That means the NSA had almost certainly been hearing about it for a couple weeks. Given the worlds' experience with SARS and MERS, that was the time to get serious.
What was possible with this warning? Taiwan, for example, used this time to create 32 new production lines [1] for masks.
Later, there were classified briefings that Republicans like Senator Burr were privately warning businesses about. While lying to the public and using the warning period not to get serious about dealing with the pandemic but to save money.
We had 8-12 weeks of warning, and Trump either took no serious action or deliberately delayed decisive action to start figuring out supply lines of respirators or ventilators. We had, to use your phrase, "MONTHS" -- actually a quarter of a year -- and Trump squandered them.
He invoked the Defense Production Act YESTERDAY for god's sake. The time to do that was when it became clear containment had failed. Ie sometime around mid-January.
ps -- we make plenty of stuff in the US. in reality, the US is the second largest manufacturer in the world after China. That's not to say that manufacturing isn't declining in the united states, but to pretend the enormous set of US manufacturers doesn't exist is not grounded in facts.
See also BLS 51-4111 -- 72k employed in the US in tool & die manufacturing.
Second, Trump diddled for 8-12 weeks to start manufacturing things. People are screaming because the Chinese government confirmed by Dec 31 that they had cases of the virus. That means the NSA had almost certainly been hearing about it for a couple weeks. Given the worlds' experience with SARS and MERS, that was the time to get serious.
What was possible with this warning? Taiwan, for example, used this time to create 32 new production lines [1] for masks.
Later, there were classified briefings that Republicans like Senator Burr were privately warning businesses about. While lying to the public and using the warning period not to get serious about dealing with the pandemic but to save money.
We had 8-12 weeks of warning, and Trump either took no serious action or deliberately delayed decisive action to start figuring out supply lines of respirators or ventilators. We had, to use your phrase, "MONTHS" -- actually a quarter of a year -- and Trump squandered them.
He invoked the Defense Production Act YESTERDAY for god's sake. The time to do that was when it became clear containment had failed. Ie sometime around mid-January.
ps -- we make plenty of stuff in the US. in reality, the US is the second largest manufacturer in the world after China. That's not to say that manufacturing isn't declining in the united states, but to pretend the enormous set of US manufacturers doesn't exist is not grounded in facts.
See also BLS 51-4111 -- 72k employed in the US in tool & die manufacturing.
[1] https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202003230016