It was five years ago. So what? Still a squandered opportunity and a total disgrace how NY Democrats bend over backwards for illegals and other criminals parasiting off the Welfare State while the highest taxed citizens on the planet are left to Democrat Death Squads.
This is the NY Post article Trump quoted:
We didn’t have to have ventilator shortage — leaders chose not to prep for pandemic
Several years ago, after learning that the Empire State’s stockpile of medical equipment had 16,000 fewer ventilators than the 18,000 New Yorkers would need in a severe pandemic, state public-health leaders came to a fork in the road.
They could have chosen to buy more ventilators to back up the supplies hospitals maintain. Instead, the health commissioner, Howard Zucker, assembled a task force for rationing the ventilators they already had.
In 2015, that task force came up with rules that will be imposed when ventilators run short. Patients assigned a red code will have highest access, and other patients will be assigned green, yellow or blue (the worst), depending on a “triage officer’s” decision.
In truth, a death officer. Let’s not sugar-coat it. It won’t be up to your own doctor.
In 2015, the state could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece, or a total of $576 million. It’s a lot of money, but in hindsight, spending half a percent of the budget to prepare for pandemic was the right thing to do.
Video of Trump and more at link. See also:
Trump cites Post op-ed to blast Cuomo for not buying ventilators — in 2015
The president apparently was referring to a Gateway Pundit pickup of an op-ed that appeared in The Post Friday by former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, who said that in 2015, Cuomo and other state officials learned that in a potential pandemic, New York would need 18,000 ventilators but only had 2,000 on hand.
