The media is in sheer panic now

@Nathan Blue, #21:

None of that is remotely accurate, but just partisan spin. Trump orchestrates such things to bait and trap morons like you.

The PPE shortages are only imaginary? Tell it to the doctors, nurses, and other front-line pandemic responders

Perhaps he should have been devoting less time to baiting and trapping morons like me, and more time to figuring out how to provide medical care workers with an adequate supply of basic protective gear. And the general public? I had to buy a cloth face mask from an Amish leather belt company now selling masks on eBay. Neither CVS nor Walgreens had anything.

@Nathan Blue: Maybe, Obama should have thought about the importance of medical equipment being manufactured in the US instead of China. When Obama under Obama Care put the tax on medical equipment, the medical equipment manufacturers had to move to China to be world competitive. Another Democrat failure to understand the issue of unintended consequences for their actions.

Haven’t been posting for a while due to health issues with my better half. I have been lurking when I can though…

Greg #12

“From early in the coronavirus epidemic, we recognized that the risk to seniors, particularly those with serious underlying health conditions, are very real,” Pence said. “And so there’s been emphasis from early on.”

Which no doubt explains why the May 7th delivery…was a newsworthy photo-op event, rather than an example of a routine event that should have been going on all along.

You mean like banning travel from China (Jan 31)? That seems fairly close to the four month timeframe you refer to in #18.

Although the reaction from your media folks (plus your candidate for President AND Comrade Bernie) wasn’t particularly positive or supportive at the time…

Vox confidently declared that “The evidence on travel bans for diseases like coronavirus is clear: They don’t work.” The article originally referred to the “Wuhan coronavirus” in its headline, before left-wing journalists and Democrats argued that terminology was racist.

Vox also tweeted on Jan. 31: “Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No.”

The Verge cautioned that Trump’s policies “contradict advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), which said yesterday that countries should not restrict travel or trade in their response to the new virus.”

BuzzFeed News asserted that “barring foreign travelers from China, along with making U.S. citizens self-quarantine at home … likely violated civil rights laws, without leading to any real lowered risk of a U.S. outbreak,” citing “global health law expert” Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University.

STAT, a health and medicine news site, reported that the travel ban was similar to calls from “conservative lawmakers and far-right supporters of the president,” even as “public health experts … warn that the move could do more harm than good.”

Joe Biden led the way, quickly attacking what he called Trump’s “record of hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering” after the travel restrictions were announced…

In March, another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., conspicuously insisted at a Fox News town hall that he wouldn’t consider closing the U.S. border to prevent the spread of coronavirus, before condemning what he called the president’s xenophobia.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-media-change-tune-trump-attacks-coronavirus-china-travel-ban

Maybe if there hadn’t been the distraction of the Dem’s umpteenth whiff at flinging excrement at the walls trying to find something that might stick, there could have been some productive bi-partisan discussion of what to do when.

Note that Comrade Bernie’s response is from March, LONG after you contend ‘something’ should have been going on.

The Vermont senator has since taken to promoting “Medicare-for-All” and workers’ rights amid the outbreak

Yeah, THAT sounds helpful to prevent the spread of the pandemic (rolls eyes)

Greg #18
In a time of declared national emergency, it shouldn’t take four freaking months to crank out an adequate supply of medical-grade paper filter masks and gloves.

Um, WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic March 11th. President Trump declared the national state of emergency on March 13th, two days later.

Not to pick nits, but from then to May 7th is 55 days, slightly less than TWO months – but, then again, I know math can be an issue for lefties.

Just for fun, can you name which federal agency exactly is responsible for ‘cranking them out’?

Oh, that’s right, it’s private industry that actually makes things.

Subject to government regulations…and, as you say, “More on that:”

Remember that one of President Trump’s goals was to decrease regulations. And, as usual, there were those who ‘resisted’ any suggestion from President Trump and opposed any decreases in regulatory authority.

But critics are alarmed…saying that rolling back important Obama-era protections and blocking new ones is already jeopardizing the health and safety of Americans. “If we do see [a major disaster] again, it will be quite tragic,” said Amit Narang, a regulatory expert at Public Citizen. “But it’ll be very easy and legitimate to point to the massive deregulatory agenda as the cause of that disaster. That’s the real danger that this administration is flirting with right now.”
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/01/20/trumps-regulatory-experiment-year-one-000620/

Hmmm, DE-regulation will be the danger/tragedy/disaster according to the ‘regulatory expert’.

(Although ‘Flirtin’ with Disaster’ is a pretty good song…but I digress)

So what part of Trumps’ DE-regulation is “jeopardizing the health and safety of Americans” and preventing companies from ‘cranking them out’?

Large mask makers say they are doing everything to ramp up production. Meanwhile, the medical establishment and some in the media are urging the Trump administration to invoke Cold War-era emergency legislation to force private manufacturers to make even more.

At the same time, government regulations are stifling the ability of manufacturers to set up new N95 mask production facilities—handicapping the private sector’s ability to respond to the current crisis.

Surely that can’t be the case. After all, ‘experts’ have assured us that the regulations are vital and necessary to prevent ‘causing a disaster’!

EXPERTS!!!

“We’re trying to source materials, design N95 masks, and mass produce them,” says Matt Chisholm, a spokesperson for the Open PPE Project, a group of about 15 engineers, technologists, and others who are attempting to set up their own N95 mask production facility…

Chisholm declined to give a rough date for when the Open PPE project would be capable of churning out masks. However long it does take, he says, getting the necessary government approvals could add up to three extra months.

The production of N95 masks is regulated by the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Prospective makers of N95 masks must submit detailed written applications to NOISH, and send finished products to its Personal Protective Technology Laboratory for testing. NIOSH staff must also personally inspect new manufacturing sites before they’re allowed to start pumping out masks…regulators have told Chisholm that getting agency approval could take anywhere from 45 to 90 days.

Complicating things further, he continues, is that NOISH inspectors are under travel restrictions (as are most federal workers), potentially delaying approval even longer.

U.S. Needs Billions of New Masks to Combat Coronavirus. Feds Say It’ll Take Up To 90 Days to Approve New Mask-Making Facilities.

Methinks perhaps the ‘regulatory expert from Public Citizen’ doesn’t understand cause and effect very well.

Or, is just anti-Trump…

Greg #36 – “And the general public? I had to buy a cloth face mask from an Amish leather belt company now selling masks on eBay. Neither CVS nor Walgreens had anything.”

You DO realize don’t you that the CDC only changed that recommendation a month or so ago. Prior to that, masks were NOT recommended for the general public.

“a homemade mask is better than nothing…In terms of the science, the bigger particles, which are the ones most likely to be filtered by a homemade mask, are going to fall quickly to the ground, anyway. The smaller particles will pass right through the mask…Plus, none of them can provide a seal around the face. The smaller particles then go right around the filter. So there’s no real protection from inhaling particles that might have virus.” Kirsten Koehler, faculty expert from the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University
https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/04/24/covid-19-mask-glove-use/

So, really, the homemade mask is just a placebo anyway.

But, you know, ‘Party of Science’!

@Randy: Thanks!

Not sure how much I’ll be able to be around, but had some time today.

Nobody is going to jail over masks. That’s why it’s suddenly all liberals want to talk about. Just the latest distraction from the attempt to close America until she dies of economic paralysis at the hands of certain state governments that suddenly act totalitarian instead of in the interests of the citizens.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin slapped down that state govt for unconstitutional actions.