Posted on 04/07/2020 11:59:29 AM PDT by conservative98
In 2006, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration began purchasing ventilators to allow the city to be prepared for a pandemic like the current coronavirus crisis -- only for the city to later auction them off, according to a report.
ProPublica reported Monday that the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a report in 2006 on the city's preparedness for pandemic influenza -- similar to the 1918 Spanish Flu or the 2019 novel coronavirus -- that projected the city would need thousands of extra ventilators in order to properly treat all of its residents who got sick. The plan was then put into action, with the city initially buying 500 ventilators before it ran out of money to buy more and to maintain the ones it had already stockpiled, according to ProPublica.
Those ventilators were then auctioned off some time before 2016 because the city could not afford to maintain them in working order, partially because the model of ventilator the city had purchased was no longer in production after 2009, the report said.
"We tried to fill in the gap as best we could," Dr. Issac Weisfuse, the former deputy commissioner of the city's health department, told ProPublica.
"This was beyond our control but had a direct impact on cost and viability of maintaining a stockpile," Michael Lanza, the current assistant press secretary for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said according to ProPublica.
The outlet also reported that New York City set out to purchase over one million N95 face masks -- the type suggested for use to protect against the coronavirus -- in order to distribute them to health professionals. It purchased less than one-quarter of that and the masks all eventually expired.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It’s mind-boggling.
Also remove metal parts and microwave for 3 mins.
I'm going to heat the oven to 160°F and put the mask in, minus the elastic to see what it does.
I'm also thinking that black box with a piece of glass over the top, with airholes, would be an effective dryer.
I'm auctioning off 100 Roosie dimes right now but there's lots there.
bttt
if nothing else this is making us inventive
"Those ventilators were then auctioned off some time before 2016 because the city could not afford to maintain them in working order, partially because the model of ventilator the city had purchased was no longer in production after 2009, the report said."
Earlier in the article we were told that the ventilators were purchased in 2006. This is a 3 year lifetime on equipment that now cost $20,000 to $50,000 after which parts are unavailable. These ventilators are what those of us who worked at corporations called Capital Equipment. Most capital equipment I dealt with had useful lifetimes of 10 to 20 years. During this pandemic we see buying from wherever purchasing departments can get them. This will be a nightmare to manage going forward. If there ever was a case for standardization, this would be one. If models are changed too frequently, maintenance will be a nightmare.
To minimize the inflation of medical costs, this seems to be an area where national standards with reasonable useful lifetimes are instituted to prevent having a bunch of ventilators that cannot be used because one cannot find parts.
De Fascio
Exactly why would a paper mask "expire" unless it was decades old and perhaps then the paper might begin to get brittle.
Looking at my box of N95 filters. Nowhere is there any expiration date. Sounds like some FearBro spouting Doom & Gloom in the Room Fake News.
I’ve heard that the masks only have a five year storage life because of the elastic band used to hold it on to the face.
They also changed the term “Mentally Retarded” to “Developmentally Disabled.”
They probably bought those models because they were cheap. They were probably cheap because they were nearing EOL.
It would probably be a good idea to model the medical equipment cache on the Forestry Service's National Incident Radio Support Cache (NIRSC). This radio cache consists of some 8,000 handheld radios, 200 repeaters, plus a dozen or more portable satellite systems. It is located and maintained by the National Interagency Incident Communications Division (NIICD) of the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho. They obviously have a plan to periodically test, replace parts and replace older or damaged equipment - and it has been successfully run for decades.
Effing Criminal!
Dems care more about illegals than about tax paying, law abiding Americans.
Democrats are scum.
For illegals 27M$ but not Gold Star families?
So wrong.
He cut the SALT deduction. They had to sell off ventilators to make up for the revenue shortfall from a potential tax cut./S
I can’t believe I wrote that with a straight face.
Mental hygiene , like wash your brain ?
Is there a baby way, perhaps a fifth grade way to explain what is the difference among viruses.
The symptoms, the areas of the body they attack, the length of the illness, fever, body aches, etc.
Seems as though the symptoms are all the same, so what gives them their respective names and fatality rate. There doesn’t look like there is much distinction.
Except for the way the people are supposed to behave...like now, which I never have had to do...ever.
It might be necessary, after that.
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