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Sunday, April 5, 2020

What Did Kushner Mean? The Federal Stockpile

The media is still buzzing about what Jared Kushner said the other day at the daily corona virus briefing at the White House.  Kushner was asked about the federal strategic stockpile.  Here's what he said:

“You have instances where, in cities, they’re running out, but the state still has a stockpile.   And the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.
“You have to take inventory in your own state and you have to show that there’s a real need.”
The media has been going crazy since Kushner said this because they portray his remarks as claiming the stockpile as only to be used for the federal government.  To hear the media, Kushner is saying that the states can no longer get items from the stockpile.

That's nonsense.  At the briefing the next day, the media was in full feeding frenzy over the remark.  It was explained there that the federal government wants to keep some items like ventilators in reserve in the federal stockpile rather than distributing them all to states.  This is so that when crisis situations occurs in the next two weeks, the feds will have some ventilators left that they can send where they are actually needed.  If the whole stockpile had been sent to New York, for example, there would be none left to help New Orleans or Detroit or wherever the next hot spot occurs.  That's all.  No one said that the feds were going to keep the ventilators away from the states.

Remember this:  up until today, there have been no reported cases of someone in New York needing a ventilator where none were available.  That means that the request by the governor a few weeks back for 40,000 ventilators was an overly large request.  It's a good thing that the federal government didn't send all that Cuomo requested.  Indeed, it forced Coumo to use state resources to gather up ventilators in parts of New York that are relatively unaffected to get them to places that need them.  ALL state resources have to be marshalled.  It's not enough to just rely on the feds because the feds just do not have the resources to handle all supply needs and the system is not set up to work that way.

So far this morning, I've seen articles in the NY Post in which the general who handled the response to Katrina denouncing Kushner for what he supposedly said (but actually denouncing the phony spin that the media put on those remarks.)  I've also heard a panel on MSNBC lamenting that people are dying because the White House if following this policy of denying the federal stockpile to states -- again a blatant lie on two counts:  no one in the USA has been denied a ventilator, and the federal stockpile has gone in great part to the states with the remainder being held so that crisis areas can get quick help.  The actual facts don't seem to matter.

I am getting more and more angry at the blatant lies being pushed by the media.  It doesn't help the country to dredge up panic through lies.


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