Decoy73
New member
Peace to you as well. I had to take a moment, have a beer and then return to this downward spiraling discussion. It seems I was getting a bit defensive. Something I try to avoid. And I apologize if I wasn't clear with my original comments related to the supplies be sent to China.
But do you ever run across a topic that kind of "hits close to home" or at least is somewhat relevant to your career? That's what happened here with me. My profession of 20+ years is hospital based and I drew some parallels here. Maybe I shouldn't have, but nonetheless here we are.
Pretty much every week I am involved at least in some way with the prospect of loaning or borrowing "supplies" related to my profession to other hospitals in the area. It''s just what you do and its a good system of sharing for the good of patients everywhere. However in the case of shortages or very high use, my hospital and others generally will not loan out any "supplies" because our number one priority is our patients. Of course there are always exceptions in extreme circumstances, but generally reserve our supplies for our patient in times such as this. In this scenario the American people are "our patients" and China is the "other hospital." We would love to help them, but not at the peril of our own people. Now it is likely that the administration didn't foresee our shortages of supplies a month later and that was a huge mistake on their part. Isn't that what the CDC is supposed to do? Run simulations of what will happen in case an outbreak or endemic turns into a pandemic and then assure we are adequately prepared. It was foolish for them to not think this wouldn't spread like wildfire from a country as populated and connected to the world like China is.
So my whole beef with all this is that they didn't make sure we were going to be adequately supplied before sending out 17 tons of masks and gowns, etc. It was coming here--just a matter of when. Any epidemiologist or infectious disease expert worth their salt at the CDC surely would know that. What was the root of this failure then? The CDC dropping the ball? Were they even involved (with Trump you never know)? Was Trump out golfing and still in his denial mode that this was going to all go away?
So yes helping other countries is almost always a good thing, but we need to take care of our own first.
