Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday rebutted President Trump’s comments that New York was overstating its need for ventilators and that the state was overlooking thousands of the machines in storage.
In at least 10 government reports from 2003 to 2015, federal officials predicted the United States would experience a critical lack of ventilators and other lifesaving medical supplies if it faced a viral outbreak like the one currently sweeping the country.
The drumbeat of warnings undermines President Donald Trump’s claim last week that “nobody in their wildest dreams” could have imagined the demand for ventilators that now exists. The demand is pushing hospitals to the brink in New York City and threatening to do so in parts of Washington state, California, Louisiana and beyond.
In addition, a 2017 study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that “substantial concern exists that intensive care units (ICUs) might have insufficient resources to treat all persons requiring ventilator support” and that even the supplies held in the so-called Strategic National Stockpile “might not suffice to meet demand during a severe public health emergency.”
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More Fact Checking Trump’s Campaign Rally Press Briefing:
- Trump claimed, “nobody was prepared for this,” not even past presidents. He added, “In all fairness to all of the former presidents, none of them ever thought a thing like this could happen.”
- FALSE! The US intelligence community and public health experts had warned for years that the country was at risk from a pandemic.
- Trump claimed, “You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus, you know you can call it many different names. I’m not sure anybody even knows what it is.”
- IT’S NOT THE FLU! They share some of the same symptoms.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday during an online chat with NBA star Stephen Curry that the coronavirus is “very much more transmissible than flu and more importantly, it’s significantly more serious” — with a mortality rate approximately 10 times higher than the 0.1% for the flu.
It’s also obviously untrue that there is not “anybody” who knows what the coronavirus is.
***As of Friday evening, the US has at least 101,242 known cases of coronavirus and 1,588 people have died, according to CNN’s tally of cases reported by health officials.
