Just more incompetence and finger pointing from someone ill equipped to handle a tough job
Nation's stockpile proves no match for the coronavirus pandemic
As complaints about dire shortages of protective gear for medical workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis began to stream in, President Donald Trump was quick to point the finger of blame at his predecessor, Barack Obama.
It was Obama and other administrations, he said, who left the shelves of the nation's Strategic National Stockpile bare of the items needed to combat the coronavirus.
To an extent, the President was right. The Obama administration did use and then failed to replace items from the stockpile to fight the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic.
But Trump hadn't replaced those items either, despite repeated warnings that the country was ill-prepared for a pandemic, stockpile experts said.
The President's criticism also ignored a key point: The stockpile was never intended -- or funded -- to be a panacea for a pandemic. Rather, it serves as one piece of the overall supply chain puzzle during a disaster.
The stockpile's inadequacies quickly came to light in the coronavirus pandemic -- a devastating health crisis that experts have long predicted. Trump delayed striking deals with the private sector and invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to produce more medical supplies, making a bad situation worse. And states -- bidding against one another and other countries for supplies at sharp markups -- turned to the quick relief of the stockpile, only to find it understocked and the federal stewards overseeing it in disarray.
The picture was complicated even further when a whistleblower alleged this week that the system of deciding what to put in the stockpile had been corrupted by outside lobbyists and politically driven decision-making, rather than science.
"People who somehow believed it was a bottomless pit filled with everything they can imagine were not paying attention," said Tara O'Toole, a physician and former Department of Homeland Security official who once chaired an advisory committee on the stockpile.
If politicians were surprised to discover that, "then shame on them," she said.
Asked about why his administration hadn't replenished the bare cupboards he complained about, Trump suggested in an interview aired Tuesday that he was too busy dealing with scandals—the President called them "hoaxes"—that have marred the first three years of his administration.
"Well, I'll be honest with you," Trump told ABC News Anchor David Muir. "I (had) a lot of things going on."
'The difference between life and death'
States quickly realized the stockpile wasn't going to be their savior.
The federal government assured Illinois hundreds of thousands of N95 respirator masks were on the way, Illinois Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell said. But when the trucks arrived, the masks turned out to be surgical masks -- insufficient protection for the health care workers treating patients with the devastating virus.
The difference in the masks is "the difference between life and death," for frontline health care workers, Mitchell said. "What we have gotten out of the Strategic National Stockpile has not been what we were promised or what we were owed."
Similar complaints popped up across the country. Some states questioned whether supplies were being distributed equitably. Others reported receiving supplies that had passed their expiration date, had deteriorated or were not properly maintained.
When California received 170 ventilators from the federal stockpile that were not in working condition, it enlisted Bloom Energy, which normally produces clean energy fuel cells, to help refurbish the machines.
"The only feedback we had was, 'These ventilators are not working,'" Bloom's chief operations officer Susan Brennan said.
The ventilators had never been used but they also hadn't been prepped and preventative maintenance had not been performed, Brennan said. Bloom's team replaced batteries, calibrated oxygen settings, tested air flows and turned the rehabbed ventilators around in about 24 hours.
There were also maintenance issues with the remaining supplies in the stockpile. The government held 10,000 ventilators in reserve in anticipation of a surge in the coronavirus, Trump said in April. But about 20% of those ventilators were not in shape to be deployed because of a lapse in the government contract to keep the machines maintained, a source familiar with the matter said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said, "All ventilators deployed from the SNS are in operating condition and maintained based on the original manufacturer's specifications outlined in the service manual."
The HHS inspector general announced last month it would conduct an audit of whether the stockpile was effectively managed during the coronavirus crisis...…(A Trump Appointee)
"We've always reviewed aspects of the Department's planning and response to emergencies," a spokesperson for the inspector general said. "In this case, however, the ongoing public health crisis prompted this review."
Nation's stockpile proves no match for the coronavirus pandemic
As complaints about dire shortages of protective gear for medical workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis began to stream in, President Donald Trump was quick to point the finger of blame at his predecessor, Barack Obama.
It was Obama and other administrations, he said, who left the shelves of the nation's Strategic National Stockpile bare of the items needed to combat the coronavirus.
To an extent, the President was right. The Obama administration did use and then failed to replace items from the stockpile to fight the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic.
But Trump hadn't replaced those items either, despite repeated warnings that the country was ill-prepared for a pandemic, stockpile experts said.
The President's criticism also ignored a key point: The stockpile was never intended -- or funded -- to be a panacea for a pandemic. Rather, it serves as one piece of the overall supply chain puzzle during a disaster.
The stockpile's inadequacies quickly came to light in the coronavirus pandemic -- a devastating health crisis that experts have long predicted. Trump delayed striking deals with the private sector and invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to produce more medical supplies, making a bad situation worse. And states -- bidding against one another and other countries for supplies at sharp markups -- turned to the quick relief of the stockpile, only to find it understocked and the federal stewards overseeing it in disarray.
The picture was complicated even further when a whistleblower alleged this week that the system of deciding what to put in the stockpile had been corrupted by outside lobbyists and politically driven decision-making, rather than science.
"People who somehow believed it was a bottomless pit filled with everything they can imagine were not paying attention," said Tara O'Toole, a physician and former Department of Homeland Security official who once chaired an advisory committee on the stockpile.
If politicians were surprised to discover that, "then shame on them," she said.
Asked about why his administration hadn't replenished the bare cupboards he complained about, Trump suggested in an interview aired Tuesday that he was too busy dealing with scandals—the President called them "hoaxes"—that have marred the first three years of his administration.
"Well, I'll be honest with you," Trump told ABC News Anchor David Muir. "I (had) a lot of things going on."
'The difference between life and death'
States quickly realized the stockpile wasn't going to be their savior.
The federal government assured Illinois hundreds of thousands of N95 respirator masks were on the way, Illinois Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell said. But when the trucks arrived, the masks turned out to be surgical masks -- insufficient protection for the health care workers treating patients with the devastating virus.
The difference in the masks is "the difference between life and death," for frontline health care workers, Mitchell said. "What we have gotten out of the Strategic National Stockpile has not been what we were promised or what we were owed."
Similar complaints popped up across the country. Some states questioned whether supplies were being distributed equitably. Others reported receiving supplies that had passed their expiration date, had deteriorated or were not properly maintained.
When California received 170 ventilators from the federal stockpile that were not in working condition, it enlisted Bloom Energy, which normally produces clean energy fuel cells, to help refurbish the machines.
"The only feedback we had was, 'These ventilators are not working,'" Bloom's chief operations officer Susan Brennan said.
The ventilators had never been used but they also hadn't been prepped and preventative maintenance had not been performed, Brennan said. Bloom's team replaced batteries, calibrated oxygen settings, tested air flows and turned the rehabbed ventilators around in about 24 hours.
There were also maintenance issues with the remaining supplies in the stockpile. The government held 10,000 ventilators in reserve in anticipation of a surge in the coronavirus, Trump said in April. But about 20% of those ventilators were not in shape to be deployed because of a lapse in the government contract to keep the machines maintained, a source familiar with the matter said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said, "All ventilators deployed from the SNS are in operating condition and maintained based on the original manufacturer's specifications outlined in the service manual."
The HHS inspector general announced last month it would conduct an audit of whether the stockpile was effectively managed during the coronavirus crisis...…(A Trump Appointee)
"We've always reviewed aspects of the Department's planning and response to emergencies," a spokesperson for the inspector general said. "In this case, however, the ongoing public health crisis prompted this review."
