In an unlikely turn of events, Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has been working alongside President Trump, even praising him for working with him.
New York was in no way prepared for this outbreak and sadly there is a lot more Gov. Cuomo could have done to better prepare for this but he instead chose to do nothing.
Back in 2015, it was recommended to him to purchase 16,000 ventilators just in case there was a pandemic in the future, he refused.
What he chose to do instead was to have a team of triage officers playing god by putting a lottery into place. They would get to decide who gets a ventilator and who would just be left to die. And we know that if former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had any say at all he would just let the elderly die, he said so in a video that resurfaced during his presidential campaign.
The task force put into place for this lottery came up with a set of rules that will be imposed when the ventilators run short. Based on the “triage officers” decision each patient will be assigned a color code, red code has the highest access, then all other patients will be green, yellow or blue, which is the worst. These decisions will not be left up to the patient’s doctor.
Instead of spending $576 million on much-needed ventilators in 2015, he threw away $750 million on a “Buffalo Billion” solar panel factory. When it comes to budget priorities, spending half a percent of the budget on ventilators is a no brainer.
Now the pandemic is really here and Cuomo’s grim reaper rules must be applied. Demetre Daskalakis, New York City’s deputy commissioner for disease control is anticipating “some very difficult decisions.” So far, in New York City, 25% of confirmed cases need to be hospitalized, and 44% of those need a ventilator.