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Writer's pictureChuck Radda

In the eyes of a thief, everyone is a thief.

First off, if Trump is really all-in on his war against the virus, I'm with him.


And if he really saw the maps for the first time today—the maps we've all been frightened about for the past month—then good enough. Now he knows that if we had all followed his happy-time dreams about the warm wind blowing the virus away somehow, two million Americans would have paid the price. They may still, but now he gets it. Better late than never.


And if he actually listened to the experts and gave up his Easter Parade "aspiration" because he realizes now that Easter may very well be the peak day in this cycle, I won't complain.


But everything he said tonight is undone for me by his callous, uncharitable, and craven accusation that medical personnel are stealing equipment. These are the same medical personnel who are dying, and who will continue to die, because he went "all in" on the coronavirus when it was all too late.


Of course a thief sees his own reflection in everyone around him, ignoring the simple facts in front of his nose. Right now in New York City there are 60,000 cases of Covid-19. And rising. If we assume that a nurse visits a victim five times a day and performs any kind of medical procedure near that victim while dealing with ten other victims, that's fifty masks. But since there are 6000 x 10 victims, there go 300,000 masks in one day. A new mask for each visit is the only way to protect the soldiers in Trump's War, yet he's willing to nickel-and-dime them when they ask for weapons.


Of course we know that hospital staffs are doubling up on masks, wearing them past the point where the protection is optimal, and although I can't say for certain that this has killed doctors and nurses, we can certainly make that inference. 300,000 mask per day may be high—I'm not the expert hospital administrator that the president is, but 300,000 masks in a city like New York, with nearly 100 hospitals in the metropolitan area and thousands of patients suffering from ailments other than Covid-19—well, 300,000 may not be very much.


I don't know if doctors and nurses are stashing equipment, but assuming they're not selling it in the streets or on eBay and simply want to ensure the fact that they have a mask for their next shift, good on them. The president was slow to act and exacerbated the shortages—what medical personnel do now to save patients' lives and maintain their own wellbeing is none of his business.


Let him do his job: let them to theirs.

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