Every day we are seeing and hearing the desperate pleas of governors and health care workers across the country for the PPE (personal protective equipment), tests and ventilators needed to save the lives of Americans and which, even now, they cannot obtain and are not receiving from the administration of Donald Trump.
The refusal of the Trump administration to oversee, coordinate and lead the effort to obtain these vital goods and the mindless insistence that all the states compete with one another and with the federal government to acquire them has resulted in an immense duplication and waste of governmental effort, ruinous and counter-productive competition, the squandering of precocious time and disastrous escalations in the prices of these vital goods.
Americans are continuing to pay a heavy price for the weeks of initial denial by Donald Trump of the reality of the coronavirus, his bizarre beliefs that it would just go away and his irresponsible insistence that the his administration would not accept responsibility for going on a truly war footing and use the full power of the federal government to produce the essential life-saving PPE, testing and ventilators .
The inaccurate and misleading statements and constant self-congratulation in Donald Trump’s daily press briefings are in stark contrast to the desperate pleas of health care providers across the country who are on the front lines of response to the pandemic for PPE, tests and ventilators that simply are not being provided by the Trump administration. Even now, Donald Trump continues to be in denial concerning the inadequacy of tests and the desperate need for ventilators.
Donald Trump’s continuing refusal to use the full powers provided to him under the Defense Protection Act and to bring the full power of the presidency to bear has resulted in a totally inadequate response to this national emergency.
The pandemic is spreading and hundreds of thousands of additional lives are being, and will be unnecessarily lost unless the president acts now to fully use the powers available to him under the act.
Further delay is inexcusable.
Bruce Menke
Athens