By Bill Badour
As of Saturday, April 4, Michigan is currently the state with the third most confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 10,791. For the second time in Michigan, the confirmed cases have increased by more than 1,000 in a day.
With no sign of the COVID-19 pandemic slowing down in the United States, it is more than reasonable to ask how Michigan and other states are receiving medical supplies.
On March 27, Governor Gretchen Whitmer stated in a radio interview: “What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts – they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan.”
The next day, President Trump approved Michigan’s request for a major disaster declaration. By approving the request, Michigan was able to receive more federal aid. The same day, Michigan received a shipment of 112,000 N-95 masks from the strategic national stockpile. While that may sound like a generous amount, that is merely 0.56% of the 20 million N-95 masks requested.
The state of Michigan also received 1,700 ventilators. While this is a somewhat substantial amount, it still falls short of the 25,000 ventilators that were requested.
While some states such as Michigan and Washington have received only a fraction of the supplies that they’ve requested, other states such as Florida have received all of what they’ve requested.
For example, Florida requested 430,000 surgical masks and 180,000 N-95 masks on March 11. On March 14, Florida received all of what they had requested.
On Feb. 5, the United States had only 12 confirmed cases, yet tens of thousands of confirmed cases were reported around the world. On that same day, according to the Washington Post, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar requested $2 billion to buy respirators and other medical supplies to add to the federal stockpile. Weeks later, the request was brought down to $500 million.
During a March 19 coronavirus briefing, President Donald Trump stated: “First of all, governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, and they are doing a lot of this work. The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping.”
The largest problem with not supplying states from a federal stockpile is that it creates a bidding war between states and other countries for medical supplies that are already in shortage.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer stated on Monday, March 30: “Our experience has been that other contracts we’ve entered into have been delayed or have been diverted to the federal government, as has been the case in Massachusetts and Illinois and Kentucky.”
One way to combat this would be for President Trump to use the Defense Production Act to force private companies to produce medical supplies. Trump was reluctant to do this though, because he felt that it was “nationalizing our businesses.”
The Trump administration has used the Defense Production Act before this pandemic. It was previously used to place orders for the building of drones and missiles, as well as body armor for border patrol agents.
On Friday, March 27, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and required General Motors to make ventilators. Governor Whitmer was among the leading voices who pressed the federal government to produce more ventilators.
While more ventilators are beginning to be made, there is still a worldwide shortage of most life-saving medical equipment.
