Letter to the Editor / WHO’S IN CHARGE
By Roger C. Kostmayer
Months ago the public knew that something was wrong. They were getting contradicting information about the seriousness of a deadly pandemic. Doctors and scientists were specific, detailed the facts and the needs, which clearly revealed a series of tragic failures caused by lack of interest, lack of competence and lack of leadership. Whenever the American people heard childish defensiveness about President Obama’s alleged failures, followed by self glorification -“everything we’re doing is the greatest in history, better even than anyone could imagine”- they knew they were being lied to.
There was no early acceptance of the danger that was conveyed to the President by intelligence briefers, even before his inauguration, therefor there was no early action that could have saved lives, no national strategy that would save lives, no honest communications with the people that could save lives, and five critical failures that cost American lives. Adequate TESTS weren’t made available when they could have been; VENTILATORS that save lives weren’t produced when they should have been; HEALTHCARE WORKERS weren’t multiplied and prepared with all the protective gear necessary to save their lives; the number of Hospital BEDS were drastically below what was known to be necessary, and nothing was done at the highest level; and, fifth, the ultimate solution to this new virus is the development of a vaccine, which will take at least one to 1 1/2 years, and no one in this administration focused on that when they should have – and that will cost lives.
Some of these issues are now being addressed, mostly by Governors and Mayors. What is worrisome is that the WH’s daily coronavirus briefings, that were so well handled by Dr. Fauci and the NY version by Gov. Cuomo, has recently become an Amateur Hour of deflection: military brass describing reinforcements for the war on drug smugglers; businessmen being congratulated and military officers describing the supply chain process, and son-in-law Jared Kushner and a mad economist named Navarro groveling on TV. All this raises the question – Who’s in charge?
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You are a ghoul. How about you stop using this pandemic as another opportunity to bash the President. Business as usual for you.
Thank God that people like you Kostmayer are not in charge of everything would have price tag except for you chosen’s. Enough of the Anti-Trump propaganda! You lefties are losers and never will take over this country!
Give it up Mary. Instead of going after the dimwit writer, go after the publication that gave him a bully pulpit…There’s an agenda there, to be sure, and it isn’t to harness the will of the people.
And Gov of New York as well as Mayor of NYC are touting how they fixed all the health care gaps in New York but are now wanting every ventalator in Federal hands which last I checked there are 50 states plus a couple Territories and protectoriates.
The entire world leadership didn’t get it. They saw it as the “Zombie Appocolypes” scare tactics instead of. “I know what I am saying sounds like the plot to a TV show or movie but those are based on the idea of what would happen if what is happening now, happened.”
What we need to be asking is how do we force the “Only person in the world, rules do not apply to me” attitude of the people still zooming around the islands. I have health issues and based on what had begun happening in other states I was at the grocery store getting food to last me a month. As I was there the 65+ and medical condition stay at home and Social distancing order from Surgeon General of Florida was sent out. Everyone connected to the Federal Alert system received that notice. The gov has also issued a “Safer at Home” order for essential travel only and yet everyday keep seeing way more than essential travel levels zooming up and down Ave B.
The REAL issue is the refusal by our “Only person in the world” and “Rules don’t apply to me” neighbors. As long as people are leaving their house for random BS we are still at risk because the infected are still running around infecting anyone out for essential purpose.
I have medical issues and am normally homebound so maybe that is why staying my butt at home as ordered is easier or I am just adult enough to comprehend what a directive means.
Instead of jumping on the “I hate Trump so I wanna complain about him only giving New York 6000 ventilators” bandwagon. Try telling the people still zooming around the islands to STAY HOME you know like the LEADERSHIP of local, state and national government has advised or ordered! We may have been done with this already IF everyone had stayed home for two weeks as the leadership advised 3 weeks ago. We would not be running out of needed protective gear for front line staff had everyone taken heed. But they didn’t and STILL aren’t so it is going to keep being a issue just like in Italy and Spain.
Stay your butt at HOME! It is not that flipping hard people!
Nice try, Roger. You’ve conveniently overlooked history in yet another attempt to create division and animosity. If you review the President’s State of the Union speech, from FEBRUARY 4, 2020, he mentions the emergence of the Coronavirus. You remember that speech don’t you? The one that you jeered and then cheered when Nancy Pelosi TORE IT UP, like a petulant child. You are also uninformed on the history of the National Stockpile, which was pillaged under Obama for the SARS outbreak and then the Ebola scare and was never properly re-funded or re-stocked under either administration or Congress. Your take on ventilators, healthcare workers and the purchasing of PPE also demonstrate your clearly lack of understanding of the healthcare field in general. Ventilators are complicated devices that aren’t built in a day or a week. The nation has a national shortage of nurses and respiratory technicians, so where are you expecting to get the skilled professionals from? And PPE? I can tell you from front line experience that hospitals, fire departments and EMS services routinely stock just enough of the higher levels of protection get through a single major event, not a weeks or months long event. Why? Because at the municipal levels, the fire departments and the EMS services, the strings are drawn tight by the administrations to save money and the taxpayers are even tighter. At the hospital level, again its a battle between purchasing equipment that up until 3 weeks ago, you only used once or twice a week on a small scale versus being able to adequately staff a hospital with nurses, aides, techs, environmental services, food services, and the sundry support positions that keep hospitals running. Oh, and the testing issue? That’s an issue that goes back years, that gives the FDA and CDC the first option to create new medical testing before accepting non-government developed tests. Thus, when the first round of tests came back faulty, the government had no choice but to backtrack to those bodies that had already developed working tests. Gives you a lot of confidence in a socialist/government run healthcare system, doesn’t it?
Well, and truly, stated!
This administration is full of incompetent whackadoodles. Putting Kushner in charge of the task force is maddening. He has absolutely zero medical or emergency managenent experience. Why not just hire Per Wee Herman? The chaos must stop.