Bostonheelfish

The “common cold” is not “a COVID”.

I hear you. What bothers me are the joggers running on the sidewalks right now hacking their desperate breathes everywhere where people are walking for their necessities

We won't know the success of social distancing for a while, but people are staying in their apartments. I went to CVS at midnight last night, and Manhattan was as quiet as I've ever heard. No one was outside, hardly any traffic etc. Target is controlling the flow of customers into the store to allow for social distancing to occur while inside the store, and the lines outside have people spread apart at least six feet. It's very real here, and people are taking it seriously. There's obviously bozos everywhere, but the hardest part will be preventing another spread after quarantine is over (whenever that is).

I guess so, Wes21.

What does this even mean? I don't understand the point you're trying to make. They need ventilators, estimated at 30,000 at this point.

What makes you think I have the answer to this question?

The federal can restrict travel. States cannot. NYC's hands were tied. They did not have the right to shut down the airports and shut down the highways. Any disease monitoring of people traveling within or to the U.S. is all in the jurisdiction of the federal gov't. The states cannot overstep that jurisdiction.

They should only be responsible for what is reasonably foreseeable and it should be relative to their capabilities. No healthcare system in the world is prepared for this pandemic, but the ones who had more notice before it got to their shores have a duty to help prevent the spread and treat those infected to the extent possible. New York state cannot direct other states to produce medical equipment, they can only direct those factories within their jurisdiction. The federal government was in the best position to coordinate the effort to increase ventilator production. The hospitals, and our healthcare system is not designed to combat a pandemic (again, no country's is). This is a known fact, the assumption being, if there is such an emergency, the federal government would be there assist. The federal gov't didn't even place a hold on price gouging for medical supplies. States were competing with each other for medical supplies, and the medical supply companies were price gouging (oh yeah, the Federal gov't was also competing against the states for these supplies). That is egregious. Everyone has a duty to mitigate this pandemic. What percentage do states, hospitals and the federal gov't have with regard to meeting that duty? I have no idea. That's too speculative, but I can say the federal gov't is best situated to protect the people in this country, and thus should bear most of the responsibility.

No one is saying that the Fed needs to perform magic; but considering they bungled the mitigation effort, the fact that an emergency wasn't declared for the funding of ventilators weeks ago is disgusting.

The virus hasn't even come close to peaking in NYC yet, other states won't need assistance until much later, so governors are not asking yet because the need isn't there, and if there aren't enough tests, it's harder to know exactly how many people are infected currently. The federal gov't sent 4,000 ventilators to NY state when they need 30,000. The issue isn't whether the fed has done anything, it's whether the fed has done any where close to what is needed to help save the lives of 3.3 million people (this is 1% of the U.S. population).

Nobody is asking the federal government to take over every hospital right now. Supplies are low, and the federal government can come in and help boost production, and stop price gouging. The federal government can also allocate additional resources to states on a state by state basis based on needs at specific times. This isn’t difficult, every part of the government needs to help. A national health emergency is not the time to stand on loose principles if it means people die.