This will not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to the Trump administration. After delaying and then badly mishandling the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump has used his favorite tool to try and cover for himself -- LYING!
He has said he saved many lives by acting quickly. Not true. He delayed taking any action until the middle of March -- even though he was warned about the epidemic in December and January. That delay cost many thousands of American lives.
He said America was testing more than any other country, and that anyone who wanted to be tested could do so. Not true. He turned down tests offered by W.H.O., and was far behind in developing tests in this country. And to this day, those who want to be tested must be referred by a doctor and exhibit symptoms of Coronavirus sickness. It is still untrue that anyone who wants a test can get one.
He said the country did not have enough ventilators to meet the demand from the nations' hospitals. On April 30th, he said:
“We had a ventilator problem that was caused by the fact that we weren’t left ventilators by a previous administration.”
That was also a lie. In March, the strategic national stockpile (SNS) had 16,660 ventilators ready for use, and another 2,425 that were in maintenance.
How many were needed? Well, the federal government, as of June 17th, has distributed 10,640.
So, there were enough ventilators in the stockpile to meet the need. Trump and his aides were just dragging their feet in getting them to where they were needed.
Trump did finally get some companies (owned by his buddies) to making more ventilators -- and currently the SNS has about 24,000 ventilators on hand.