De Blasio's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
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 ...
De Blasio's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
Trump’s Fault!
Fourteen years ago, Mayor Bloomberg released a pandemic plan for New York City and began stockpiling ventilators and N95 masks.
Mayor de Blasio later auctioned off the ventilators and disposed of the masks. https://t.co/eyAkzaRZPe— Michael Hendrix (@michael_hendrix) April 7, 2020
Yep. Trump made him do it.
The good “investigative reporting” question our media could not be counted on to ask was/is “when they auctioned the stockpile off, did they use the proceeds to buy new ones, to minimize the cost for replacing the old ones, or did they just put the money into the city’s general expenditures.”
meanwhile, rather than upkeep of the ventilators, cuomo spent $27 million in taxpayer dollars to fund college for illegals: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/new-york-democrats-allow-27-million-in-tuition-for-illegal-immigrants-deny-the-same-for-gold-star-families
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. The ones from 14 years ago should have been rotated through or disposed of long ago.
We probably need masks with longer term storage (better rubber or sealed nitrogen packing maybe) for emergencies. But that's not today's problem.
That’s the long and the short of it.
the a$$holes also stole a shipment of masks headed to my hospital that we were in desperate need of. I had to reuse a mask for 3 days and they have plenty. spit.
Bump
Bookmarked to show my Trump hating, Cuomo admiring spouse.
“New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene”
What the heck is mental hygiene? Is that not having a dirty mind or something
Where have you been? The term "Mental Hygiene" has been the PC term for the mentally ill, for many years now...at least in NY State it has been. They also changed the term "Mentally Retarded" to "Developmentally Disabled."
Bloomy will not be criticized for this, but if Trump had done it, he would have been condemned.
Yep they can tax the hell out of the people and spend on all kinds of crap including welfare loafers and illegal immigrants
Wake up voters
D-I-V-O-R-C-E
You have one of those situations too? I love my new wife dearly but can not understand how she loves CNN and Cuomo.
California did the same thing. After 2006, they purchased 4 portable hospitals on trucks. They also purchased thousands of ventilators, and hundreds of millions of masks and other PPE.
In 2011, when their budget was tight, they sold it all off.
THere are two solutions. First, I think states should implement a policy where when a hospital buys masks, 20% are sent to the state, which will then issue the same number of masks from their storage. This will circulate the supply, and will keep the state from being the purchaser for all the hospitals.
Second, maybe we can just buy new elastic, and they can make the masks so the elastic can be swapped out.
This is something that Preppers know and bureaucracy fails at. The way to use a stockpile is on a FIFO process and never allow the stash to go stale. Take 25 year survival food, After 3 years, use 5% of it every year and replace it. The same thing for anything that has a shelf life. Old ammunition is worrisome, get some range time with it.
On the other hand there are things for accumulation. I love silver dimes & quarters and have them stashed in a home safe. If we get a SHTF, they would spend a lot easier than gold. My problem is that I can’t easily find more now.
Ventilators? I remember living in South Carolina in the 1970s. One winter there was a real heavy, freak snowstorm that fell all the way to Savanah. It brought the entire state to a halt. It was a 50-100 year event. So what did you hear in the news? At least one vacuum-skull legislator wanted to buy snow-removal equipment for a future repeat event. I remember thinking did he own a warehouse or did he own Caterpillar stock!
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