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Raw Story, Mother Jones, Reveal News all report:
The US Sent Tons of Medical Supplies to China Even as Senators Warned of Virus Threat Here
Now the Trump administration is begging other countries to send us masks and respirators. by Fernanda Echavarri
Lee County Emergency Management Coordinator Lee Bowdry, right, drops off boxes full of new N-95 face masks to a medical center warehouse facility in Tupelo, Miss. United States hospitals are facing an unprecedented shortage of masks. Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP
The United States government sent nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies to China—including masks and respirators—almost three weeks after the first case of the coronavirus was reported in the state of Washington.
In a press release from the State Department dated Feb. 7, the agency announced it was prepared to spend up to $100 million to assist China as the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to rise there. The day the press release went out, Trump tweeted that he spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping and that China would be “successful especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker and then gone.”
At the time, sending supplies overseas may have seemed like the right thing to do. But it’s worth noting that this release of vital medical supplies came two days after several senators, including Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, offered to allocate congressional emergency funding for preventative health measures and research to ward off the virus in the United States—and President Donald Trump turned it down. “Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff, etc…” tweeted Murphy, “and they need it now.”
On Wednesday, the Trump administration asked the international community for donations of equipment, including N-95 masks, gloves, respirators, and hand sanitizer. But even as his officials ask for foreign aid, as CNN points out, Trump has a very different public message. As he boasted during Tuesday’s coronavirus briefing at the White House: “We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning that Trump’s response at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic ultimately cost American lives. “His denial at the beginning was deadly,” Pelosi said. Trump’s continuous delay in “getting equipment to where it’s needed, is deadly.”
Trump would go on to call the virus the Democrats’ “new hoax” and deny that it posed a risk to Americans for weeks after that.
The United States is now scrambling to gather PPE along with ventilators to handle the shortage of equipment.
Read the full report at Mother Jones.
Link to White House announcement:
The United States Announces Assistance To Combat the Novel Coronavirus