Donald Trump has blamed New York for a ‘late start’ in fighting coronavirus and said state Governor Andrew Cuomo ‘hit paydirt’ with ‘hospitals and ships’.
The president criticized New York and New Jersey for their early efforts in tackling the pandemic and took aim at Cuomo during the White House briefing Tuesday, in the latest war of words between the two.
‘For whatever reason, New York got off to a late start and you see what happens when you get off to a late start,’ said Trump, adding that New Jersey was similarly slow.
‘New Jersey got off to – and I think both governors are doing an excellent job… but they got off to a very late start.’
President Trump criticized New York and New Jersey for their early efforts in tackling the pandemic and took aim at Cuomo during the White House briefing Tuesday, in the latest war of words between the two
He went on to praise Washington and California states for their response to the pandemic.
‘If you look at Washington state, if you remember that all started in a very confined nursing home,’ said Trump.
‘And you had 20-odd people dying in that one home but it didn’t mean it escaped that home, which means they have a very different statistic to other states.’
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, reinforced the president’s views, saying that she recommended other affected cities and states look to California and Washington for inspiration on how to respond to the pandemic and not New York.
‘California and Washington state reacted very early to all this. Washington state had some of the earliest infections. They have kept it low and steady,’ said Birx.
Other areas should ‘work more like California then the New York metro area,’ she added.
‘Washington state, about two weeks before New York or New Jersey. California a week before New York or New Jersey, really talked to their communities and decided to mitigate before they started seeing this number,’ Birx said.
Birx said it is up to communities ‘to not have the experience of New York and New Jersey’.
When asked about the supply of ventilators to New York, after Cuomo has repeatedly said the federal government should send more supplies to the epicenter of the crisis, Trump said he had already been very generous.
‘I don’t know what he said. I think he’s been reasonably generous considering he’s a Democrat and I think he’d like to run for president so I think he’s been pretty generous under the circumstances,’ he said.
‘I got him ships, I got him hospitals, I got him a lot of things that he never thought – he had paydirt okay and I’ve been very generous on ventilators.’
He also said that New York hadn’t tapped into it’s own supply of ventilators first.
‘If you look, they had 2,000 and 4,000 in his warehouse, in their warehouse waiting to be picked up. They never picked them up so I’d have to hear it from him face to face.’
‘For whatever reason, New York got off to a late start and you see what happens when you get off to a late start,’ said Trump
He said FEMA had ‘sent additional ventilators to New York and New Jersey’ and had supplied ‘250 ambulances and 500 EMTs’ to New York.
Trump also said the government is ‘holding on’ to a stockpile of 10,000 ventilators because ‘the surge is coming.’
‘We also are holding back quite a bit. We have almost 10,000 ventilators that we have ready to go. We have to hold them back, because the surge is coming and it’s coming pretty strong and we want to be able to immediately move it into place without going and taking it, so we’re ready to go,’ he said.
He went on to say that if state governors wanted more ventilators, they just need to ask.
Taking aim at Cuomo, the president said he should stop complaining.
He ‘shouldn’t be complaining because we gave him a lot of ventilators,’ he said.
‘No matter what you give, it’s never enough.’
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, reinforced the president’s views, saying that she recommended other affected cities and states look to California and Washington for inspiration on how to respond and not
Trumps’ comments came hours after Cuomo said the federal government has created a ‘bidding war’ for ventilators that is like ‘like being on eBay’.
Cuomo also fumed over the ‘bidding war’ that has been created by the federal government for ventilators. He said that he had bought 17,000 ventilators from China for $25,000 each, a total of $425million, but that he was having to compete against every other state for them and the government.
‘Look at the bizarre situation we wound up in; every state does its own purchasing, trying to buy the same commodity.
‘The same exact item. So you have 50 states competing to buy the same item, bidding up each other, and competing against each other – it’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator,’ he said.
In a Twitter post, Cuomo also said: ‘We are one nation. We need to purchase and distribute supplies working together as one nation. 50 states can’t be competing with each other for the same supplies. It makes no sense.’
New York state now has 75,795 cases of coronavirus – an increase of 9,298 since Monday – and 1,550 have died.
Trumps’ comments came hours after Cuomo said the federal government has created a ‘bidding war’ for ventilators that is like ‘like being on eBay’
The death toll across the state of New York rose by 332 overnight and is not yet showing signs of slowing down.
The mounting crisis hit close to home for Gov. Cuomo, who reported teary-eyed that his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, had tested positive for the virus.
There’s been no love lost between the president and the New York governor in recent weeks as the state has become the epicenter for the US crisis.
On Saturday, Trump said he was considering quarantining New York – along with Connecticut and New Jersey – before backtracking hours later.
Trump made the comments as USNS Comfort ship was sent to New York to be turned into a makeshift hospital.
New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo hit back at the president’s plans in a press conference moments later.
New York state now has 75,795 cases of coronavirus – an increase of 9,298 since Monday – and 1,550 have died
USNS Comfort ship was sent to New York to be turned into a makeshift hospital
‘I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know how that could be legally enforceable,’ said Cuomo.
‘And from a medical point view, I don’t know what you would be accomplishing.
‘But I can tell you, I don’t even like the sound of it.’
Cuomo said he had spoken with Trump earlier Saturday and the two had not discussed a possible quarantine.
Cuomo went even further in an interview with CNN on Saturday evening saying it was ‘anti-American’, ‘anti-social’ and would amount to a ‘federal declaration of war’.
Up to 16 dead people were put into a refrigerator truck at The Brooklyn Hospital Center, New York on Tuesday
The grim scenes come as medical staff are now loading the the dead by forklift in 2’s as the public walk past on the open street
‘If you start walling off areas all across the country it would just be totally bizarre, counter-productive, anti-American, anti-social,’ he said.
‘This is a civil war kind of discussion,’ Cuomo said of the proposal. ‘I don’t believe that any administration could be serious about physical lockdowns of states.’
Cuomo said that it would probably be illegal to quarantine New York, as well as totally ineffective, given the rise of other virus hotspots in the country such as New Orleans.
‘It makes absolutely no sense and I don’t think any serious governmental personality or professional would support it,’ Cuomo said.
Trump backed down from the move hours later but he took aim at Cuomo and other state governors that they should be ‘appreciative’ of the government’s response.
‘All I want them to do, very simple, I want them to be appreciative. I don’t want them to say things that aren’t true. I want them to be appreciative. We’ve done a great job,’ he said Saturday.
In Trump’s press conference Tuesday he also extended his administration’s recommendations to slow the spread of virus from 15 days until the end of April.
The guidelines urged Americans to end social gatherings over the number of 10, work from home, and order take out.
Trump’s announcement Sunday that those recommendations would be extended until April 30 was an abrupt reversal after he spent much of last week saying he’d like to see limitations lifted by Easter, which is April 12.
The US death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,600 Tuesday, eclipsing China’s official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
At least 3,669 people in the US have died from the deadly virus, according to data collected by the John Hopkins University.
The global benchmark reports that 3,309 people have died from the virus in China, where the global pandemic originated.
Fears that the US is on track to become the new Italy, whose healthcare system has buckled under the weight of the pandemic, are fast becoming a reality.
Italy has recorded more deaths, with 12,428 as of Tuesday afternoon. However, the US has far surpassed its number of confirmed cases, with the US reaching 181,099 to Italy’s 105,792.
‘Prepare for 100,000 to die.’ Tony Fauci warns of astonishing death toll and tells areas not on lockdown to take action NOW
Dr. Tony Fauci painted a grim picture for Americans on Tuesday, warning that people should be prepared for 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus.
‘The answer is yes – as sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it,’ he said when asked about the six-figure mark during the daily White House press briefing. ‘Is it going to be that much? I hope not and I think the more we push on the mitigation the less likely to be that number but, being realistic, we need to prepare ourselves that is a possibility that that’s what we’ll see.’
The White House projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. if current social distancing guidelines are maintained.
Fauci used the figures to urge people to stick to social distancing guidelines of six feet of separation.
‘Whenever you’re having an effect, it’s not time to take your foot off the accelerator, and on the brake, but to just press it down on the accelerator,’ Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of mitigation efforts.
Dr. Tony Fauci warned on Tuesday that Americans should be prepared for 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus
‘The fifteen days that we’ve had of mitigation clearly are having an effect,’ he noted.
He said such efforts could also help damage any potential second wave of illness.
‘We hope that doesn’t happen and that is why we are really pushing and why I was so emphatic about making sure we abide by those mitigation strategies,’ he said.
President Donald Trump said the prediction was ‘sobering’ and called efforts to spread the slow of the coronavirus ‘a matter of life and death.’
‘It’s absolutely critical for the American people to follow the guidelines for the next 30 days, it’s a matter of life and death, frankly,’ the president said.
‘I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. We’re going through a very tough few weeks. And, hopefully, as the experts have predicted is a lot of us are predicting having studied it so hard, going to start seeing some real light at the end of the tunnel and this is going to be a very painful, a very very painful two weeks,’ he noted.
It was a stark change in tone for President Trump, who last week sounded a note of hope the crisis would be over in the next few weeks. Now his administration is preparing Americans for tougher times to come.
But through all the tough talk of days to come, there were some glimmers of hope.
‘If all of the other states and all the other metro areas are able to hold that case number down, then it’s a very different picture,’ said Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the administration’s day-to-day response to the disease.
‘We’re going to do everything we can to get it significantly below that,’ she said.
Fauci agreed: ‘We don’t accept that number, that that’s what it’s going to be. We’re going to do everything we can to get that number even below that.’
Trump defended his earlier upbeat statements about coronavirus after Fauci’s sobering figures, explaining that he tries to be a ‘cheerleader’ for the country.
He also acknowledged that he was ‘probably’ distracted by the Democratic impeachment, which culminated in his Senate trial in early February when the virus was raging and governments may have missed a window to prepare hospitals and get needed equipment.
But the president said he wouldn’t have done any better even if he hadn’t faced an impeachment he called a ‘hoax.’
‘I want to be positive. I don’t want to be negative. I’m a positive person,’ the president said at the briefing, where his team presented dire model under a worst-case scenarios and the president predicted 100,000 people may die even if Americans heed urgings to stay home and avoid spreading the disease.
‘I’m a cheerleader for the country,’ Trump said, pressed on why he did not share more bad news.
Trump also acknowledged that impeachment distracted his attention during the build-up, after DailyMail.com asked him about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s comment that it diverted the attention of the government – and whether it diverted his own.
‘I don’t like to think I did. I like to think I handled it very well but I guess it probably did. I got impeached, you know. I devoted a little time thinking about it, right? But think of it. It was a hoax, a total hoax,’ the president said.
‘You look at the reports that came out, it’s disgraceful what went on. It’s a total disgrace. They got caught in the act but you know what? We won’t talk about that now,’ Trump continued.
‘Did it divert my attention? I think I’m getting A-pluses for the way I handled myself during the phony impeachment, okay? It was a hoax, but certainly I guess I thought of it, and I think I probably acted – I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached.’
‘Maybe it’s a tribute to me. I don’t think I would have acted any faster. But the Democrats … their whole life, their whole existence, their whole being was to try to get me out of office any way they can,’ Trump vented.
‘I don’t think I would have acted any differently or any faster,’ he said.
New York state coronavirus numbers soar by 9,298 to 75,795 and deaths rise by 332 to 1,550 as Gov. Cuomo admits ‘no one knows’ when the crisis will be over
New York state now has 75,795 cases of coronavirus – an increase of 9,298 since Monday – and 1550 have died.
Overnight, 18,000 people were tested in the state of New York. To date, there have been 200,000 tests.
The death toll across the state of New York rose by 332 overnight and is not yet showing signs of slowing down.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Cuomo told of how he was unifying the state’s private and public healthcare systems to operate as one before the pandemic ‘apex’ in the state hits.
He admitted he does not know when it will come and that data projections he looks at suggest it could happen anytime between seven and 21 days from now.
Gov. Cuomo told people to settle in for a longer period of crisis than they were anticipating and said ‘we still have to come back down the other side of the mountain’ even after the peak happens.
Cuomo said the data is uneven and ‘bouncing’ so where it appears the death rates may be slowing, they are not yet.
Gov. Cuomo told people to settle in for a longer period of crisis than they were anticipating and said ‘we still have to come back down the other side of the mountain’ even after the peak happens
‘It’s an imperfect reporting mechanism but the basic line is still up. We’re still going up,’ he said, adding that he was speaking to every expert he could find to rely on their projections and not ‘opine’ over what may happen.
He said he was ‘tired’ of being ‘behind’ the virus, adding: ‘We’ve been behind this virus from day one. The virus was in China. Unless we assume some immune system variation with Asian people, it was coming here. You don’t win playing catch up. We have to get ahead of it.’
He also said it was foolish to ‘underestimate your opponent’, continuing: ‘We underestimated this virus. It’s more powerful and dangerous than we anticipated.’
Cuomo said the ‘next battle’ will be the apex of cases and deaths but he does not know when it will hit.
‘When is the apex? That is the $65,000 question. We have literally 5 models that we look at. It’s true to say almost no two are the same. The range on the apex is somewhere between seven to 21 days,’ he said.
Cuomo’s strategy to tackle the virus includes:
- Centralizing the hospital system to force public and private hospitals to share resources including staff
- First, staff from upstate hospitals that are not hard hit will be sent to New York City
- New York City hospitals, both public and private, will redistribute patients to spread them evenly across the city until each hospital reaches its capacity (all have increased their capacities by at least 50 percent
- Then, patients will be distributed from New York City to quieter hospitals upstate or further afield in the state
- Field hospitals will be used to alleviate the strain on them
- Healthcare workers from out of state will also be used to provide relief for ‘exhausted’ and ‘overwhelmed’ doctors and nurses
- He has bought 17,000 ventilators from China for $25,000 each, a total of $425million
Central to Cuomo’s plan is to centralize the hospital systems to do away with the notion of public and private healthcare and make everyone share everything.
He said he had a tense meeting on Monday with the leaders of private hospitals which ordinarily profit from a surge in patients and that he nearly ‘didn’t make it out’ of it because they were so angry at what he was instructing.
‘I don’t care which link breaks in the chain – the chain is still broken. It doesn’t matter which hospital, which link – any link breaks, the chain breaks.
‘The healthcare system is a chain. It breaks anywhere, it breaks everywhere. That has to be our mentality,’ he said.
Since issuing a call to action for retired nurses and doctors to come back to work, 78,000 people have volunteered.
‘We have now, a few days ago we put out to ask retirees, we have now 78,000 people who said they would help; God bless the state of NY and god bless humanity,’ he said.
He is urging other states to help him now so that he can help them later.
‘It’s unity. Let’s help each other. New York needs help now. This is going to be a rolling wave across the country; New York then Detroit then New Orleans then California
‘If we were smart as a nation – come help us in New York, get the experience and the training here, then let’s all go help the next place then the next place then the next place.
‘That would be a smart national way of doing this.’
Cuomo also fumed over the ‘bidding war’ that has been created by the federal government for ventilators. He said that he had bought 17,000 ventilators from China for $25,000 each, a total of $425million, but that he was having to compete against every other state for them and the government.
‘Look at the bizarre situation we wound up in; every state does its own purchasing, trying to buy the same commodity.
‘The same exact item. So you have 50 states competing to buy the same item, bidding up each other, and competing against each other – it’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator,’ he said.
Several states complain of a shortage of tests with the Republican governor of Maryland slamming Trump’s denial of the problem
The governor of Maryland has slammed President Donald Trump’s denial that there is any shortage of coronavirus test kits.
In a leaked recording of a conference call with several governors, Trump claimed that he hasn’t had a complaint about testing shortages in ‘weeks’.
Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, responded to Trump’s remarks in an interview with NPR on Tuesday, saying: ‘Yeah, that’s just not true.’
‘I know that they’ve taken some steps to create new tests, but they’re not actually produced and distributed out to the states. So it’s an aspirational thing,’ Hogan continued.
He added that the Trump administration has some new testing measures ‘in the works,’ but for now ‘no state has enough testing.’
Hogan said he believes others in the administration are ‘talking about the facts.’
‘We’re listening to the smart team,’ said Hogan, mentioning Vice President Mike Pence and other members of the White House coronavirus task force, including doctors Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci.
Trump’s controversial remarks came during an hour-long phone meeting where he was joined by Birx, Pence, Fauci, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor.
Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, responded to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday, saying: ‘Yeah, that’s just not true’
In a leaked he pushed back when asked by rural state governors for help.
‘I could give four or five examples over the last week where we have supply orders, and they’ve subsequently been cancelled, and they’re canceled in part because what our suppliers are saying is that federal resources are requesting it and trumping that,’ Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, a Democrat, said in the leaked call.
‘So we’re trying to shift the supplies to really isolate that and do contact tracing, but we don’t even have enough supplies to do the testing.’
Trump replied boasting about how the US has done more testing than any other country. He then bragged about a new four-minute test being released.
‘I haven’t heard about testing in weeks,’ Trump responded. ‘We’ve tested more now than any nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests and we’ll come out with another one tomorrow that’s, you know, almost instantaneous testing. But I haven’t heard anything about testing being a problem.’
Speaking about the new kits, Admiral Brett Giroir, head of the Public Health Service, chimed in that each state would soon be getting at least 15 of them.
‘We’re going to get that to your state lab as soon as possible,’ Giroir added.
New Mexico Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham also communicated the need for more tests after ‘incredible spikes’ in infection rates that she warned could ‘wipe out tribal nations’.
‘The rate of infection, at least on the New Mexico side — although we’ve got several Arizona residents in our hospitals — we’re seeing a much higher hospital rate, a much younger hospital rate, a much quicker go-right-to-the-vent rate for this population,’ Grisham told Trump. ‘And we’re seeing doubling in every day-and-a-half.’
Trump simply replied: Wow, that’s something.’
Several governors complained that if their state did not get the testing and personal protective equipment needed soon, their areas could be the next epicenters of the outbreak that has ravaged the US.