The View From In There

Rod Dreher, The American Conservative:

Tonight on Sean Hannity’s show, President Trump said (just past the 25:40 point) that people are exaggerating the number of ventilators needed in this crisis. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” said the president.

From The New York Times on Thursday:

What is really needed, a number of public health experts and former government officials say, is for Washington to take control of the nation’s existing ventilator supply. Because peak coronavirus infections will hit cities and regions at different times in the coming months, a centralized federal effort could send unused machines to hospitals that need them most.

“This is a national crisis,” said Frank Kendall, who served as under secretary of defense for acquisition and logistics in the Obama administration. “In a time of scarcity, you can’t leave it up to companies and governors to manage it themselves.”

Mr. Kendall said that only the federal government had the authority to take over the allocation of ventilators, both from manufacturers who are in the business of selling devices to the highest bidder, and state leaders unlikely to voluntarily let go of machines they fear they might need in the future.

“As the states become more desperate, someone has to referee the situation,” he said. “The marketplace isn’t set up to do that.”

The United States currently has between 160,000 and 200,000 ventilators, but could need up to a million machines over the course of the outbreak, according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine. In New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., hospitals are already on the verge of running out, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said this week.

What Dreher and others have been trying to make clear is that 45* is not arguing against the cost of the efforts - or telling us how hard it is to do it - he says straight out that he doesn't believe it when he's told what's going on and what it's going to take to handle the problem.

He doesn't want it to be true, so he just denies it - apparently thinking (as he's always done) that all he has to do is wish it away and somebody will make it all better for him.

FOR HIM