I think we should buy PPE and medical supplies from China or wherever we can get it, for now. Canada and the USA need to be self sufficient in this area at least, they are vital to national security, this pandemic should have taught us that much at least. For now China is gonna be selling a lot of medical supplies to us both and we better hope they do, until we can get our own production up and running. On January 20, 2021, the real war on this pandemic will begin, not before unless Trump is removed from office or dies of covid19 or some other cause. Until you have an election, a new president and senate, the best you'll do is hold on through a rolling disaster with repeated failures at premature economic restarts.
The republicans will want to create a second wave of sickness to peak for the election in order to suppress the vote as much as possible, so it will be a factor in the restart. The republicans want as many citizens crowded as closely as possible, voting in person with long close packed lines at few polling stations operating for reduced hours. There will be a gauntlet of coughing Trumpers in MAGA hats for voters to run in some places, the virus will be used as a political weapon to intimidate voters. Their reelection hopes will depend on killing as many Americans as they can, Donald will hear of it and will drive the "plan" forward.
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The Trump administration needs to do what it takes to save lives right now in the Covid-19 pandemic. But it should be aware that the reliance on China comes at great cost, writes Samantha Vinograd.
www.cnn.com
Trump put American lives in China's hands
(CNN)American lives are in China's hands.
Sam Vinograd
China: A country that the White House has
called a "strategic competitor"; a country engaged in active
influence operations against us; a country the State Department describes as an
authoritarian state that engages in gross human rights abuses; a country that the White House
said has "consistently taken advantage of the US economy"; a country whose leadership Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
described as a "substantial threat to our health and way of life"; a country Trump administration officials are blaming for covering up the truth about the coronavirus outbreak.
China: The country the United States is relying on to supply equipment to save American lives.
In a perverse -- and avoidable -- twist of fate, the country that was arguably responsible for the virus' spread because of its attempts to cover up the initial outbreak is now the one best positioned to profit from its fatal impact.
The US intelligence community has
warned that China is intent on expanding its global economic reach. Now, as the epicenter of the pandemic has shifted to the United States with more than 300,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 as of April 4, Trump's lack of preparation has given China an opening to expand that reach quickly.
The Trump administration should have had a strategy in place to adequately stockpile and distribute key supplies before the pandemic hit the homeland. It did not.
To make matters worse, President Donald Trump hesitated for weeks to use the
Defense Production Act, which he finally invoked to help direct materials and other resources to domestic manufacturers to produce ventilators and N95 masks. On Friday, he
moved to curtail the export of lifesaving personal protective equipment -- after more than
7,000 Americans already died.
Jared Kushner's spine-chilling new role
Despite Trump's latest moves, the United States is still not producing enough equipment to meet the needs of health care workers and the sick.
The administration's failure to prepare for the pandemic has left people with no other choice than to find supplies where they can. New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, who
said Saturday that the Chinese government helped facilitate the donation of 1,000 ventilators to the state, already ordered 17,000 ventilators from China. Meanwhile, private citizens such as Patriots owner
Robert Kraft have desperately sourced masks from China.
China's top medical device maker
said that the demand for ventilators, for example, is now 10 times higher than what's available at hospitals globally. While data from Chinese sources is far from reliable, a Chinese
government official indicated that China has 21 invasive ventilator makers and that Chinese manufacturers have orders for 20,000 ventilators from abroad. At this rate, orders for Chinese products will continue to surge.
China is cashing in on a crisis they played a large part in creating.
This is both a boon to China's economy and a great propaganda point for the Chinese Communist Party. Their disinformation attacks of late have tried to paint the Party as a global leader when it comes to crisis response, despite the fact it is directly responsible for suppressing information about the outbreak, which allowed the coronavirus to spread for weeks.
While the United States is struggling to contain the virus, treat those who have been infected and get enough medical supplies, China, claiming to be "post-virus," is manufacturing supplies at a rate we can't. After months of lockdowns, China can start to bounce back by filling the economic
void while we scramble just to contain the virus. They have a strategy -- and we don't.
I'm a doctor in NYC. This is what I need to feel safe
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