New York City: Catastrophe Looming

    

By Reginald Johnson

   

  

     NEW YORK --- The mayor of America's largest city is warning that unless hospitals in the city receive critically-needed medical supplies in the near future, people will die unnecessarily from the Coronavirus disease.

   Mayor Bill deBlasio told CNN Sunday the city has over 8,000 cases of COVID-19, a third of the total cases nationally and the “worst is yet to come.”

   But the federal government is not coming through with the level of assistance needed to deal with the crisis, he said.

  “We’re not getting shipments. We’re not getting the stuff we need,” deBlasio said. “If we don’t get more ventilators in the next 10 days,  people will die that don’t have to die.”

  Mayor deBlasio spoke as the nation continues to reel from the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Many cities and states are on a virtual lockdown, where non-essential businesses have been shut down and residents are being largely confined to their homes, as authorities try to stop the spread of the virus.

  Leaders from different areas of the country have been complaining that hospitals in their localities are facing shortages of key medical supplies and equipment to treat patients with COVID-19. And they’re demanding that the federal government do more.

  The most vocal critic has been deBlasio, who says that the Trump administration’s piecemeal efforts to deal with the pandemic are totally inadequate. The administration has encouraged various companies to ramp up production of needed supplies and then either donate or sell them to hospitals. Governors have also been authorized to use the National Guard where necessary to help out and the Army Corps of Engineers is being brought in some cases to build more temporary hospital beds.

    But the New York mayor said Trump has to go further and invoke the Defense Production Act, which will allow him to order private companies to go full speed on manufacturing vital supplies and equipment and get them to hospitals. The law will also enable the president to get the military involved in distribution and in providing medical personnel where needed.

  “If you don’t order companies to maximize production of ventilators, surgical masks and all the things that are desperately needed, and organize that, and prioritize where it's going to go, it won't happen in time," he said.

  Mayor deBlasio said that a "full-scale mobilization of the military is needed to deal with the greatest crisis domestically since the Great Depression."
  He added that invoking the Defense Production Act and mobilizing the military are steps that presidents in the past, Republican and Democrat, would have taken by now.
  "Eisenhower would have done it, Truman would have done it, John Kennedy would have done it. Come on!"
  US Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, agreed with deBlasio's view in another interview on CNN. She said officials from hospitals in her district are predicting shortages of ventilators and beds.
  She said Trump needs to invoke the Defense Production Act immediately. 
  "We cannot wait until people are really dying in large numbers to start production, especially of more sophisticated equipment like ventilators and beds," she said.