Gov. Cuomo of New York is holding his press conference this morning and is practically begging the federal government to mobilize. He seems genuinely not to understand why it’s not happening. There’s the Federal Defense Procurement Act to order companies to start making ventilators. There’s also a federal emergency stockpile of ventilators. Cuomo says there are 20,000 in that stockpile.
He’s arguing that they should all be deployed to New York now and then moved on to other states as they hit their critical apex of infections. I’m sure other states won’t quite see it the same way. But it’s true that New York is going first and New York has by far the largest outbreak in the country, by a factor of 10.
But why President Trump isn’t acting at all does defy explanation.
