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Cuomo sends in the National Guard in order to 'steal' upstate NY's medical supply

BrotherFease

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Cuomo plans to use National Guard to seize ventilators from upstate facilities

I am a lifelong resident of New York state. No, I do not live in "the city". I live in upstate NY, a region, Andrew Cuomo and both U.S Senators from NY, cares very little about. Recently he's been threatening to take our ventilators from upstate NY hospitals and use them for NYC. For those of you who don't know where "upstate NY" is, basically it's near the Canadian border, in the Buffalo-Rochester-Niagara Falls-Seneca Falls region. My County Executive, Adam Bello, is up in arms, as well as every assemblymen and state Senators in upstate NY. Some say, we're being selfish, but I look at it this way: We have limited supply as well. Sorry I am angry. Never been a fan of Cuomo btw. Am I right or wrong here?
 

You are right to feel that way. Doing this is saying in no uncertain terms "The lives of citizens living in New York City are worth more than the lives of rural New Yorkers. Sorry, not sorry." I would resist this measure with every fibre of my being.
 
In a crisis, I think limited resources should be put to best use. However, I do not think your local resources should be pillaged to the point of it causing your local systems a shortage. But if you have spares, and it's a time of crisis? Yeah, I think you guys should help out - as I think others should do for you if you developed a crisis.
 
If it's legal, its' not stealing.
In a crisis, he has stated very clearly that he is trying to distribute resources to achieve best overall health outcomes, without question.
If someone is holding on to something in NY they don't need now, and he has an area that has life/death need now, he will move it if possible, to where it may make a difference.
He has said he will work out reimbursing them, or transferring it back.

If you have watched his daily briefings, he's very detailed, specific, and reasonable, and you wouldn't have such stupid arguments if you got this from him.
 

We do not have any spares. Cuomo is FORCING us to give up our own. And I highly doubt Cuomo is going to show he cares about upstate NY now.
 
That's not true at all. Cuomo is going after the unused excess resources (respirators). That's a far cry from taking away locally needed resources. That would be a different thing entirely.
 
Chomsky said:
That's not true at all. Cuomo is going after the unused excess resources (respirators). That's a far cry from taking away locally needed resources. That would be a different thing entirely.
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Are they unused, Chomsky? Are these rural hospitals in possession of large numbers of ventilators that are sitting idle? Or is it just that their numbers are lower or they have not been hit yet with a deluge of cases?

Because by all accounts, this appears to be triage and focusing limited resources where they are more valuable. And what is i valuable? One of the most economically prosperous cities in the world with a huge number of Democratic-voting constituents? Or sparsely-populated rural New York counties with mainly Republican-voters?

I'll leave you to make the calculus.
 
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Not at all stupid, when you have to live through a system that constantly gives upstate the short end of the stick. Now he demands we give up our scraps and reimburse us. Not buying one bit. Neither does Adam Bello or Rich Funke or any other members of the NY statehouse. This is just another scam Cuomo does. Sorry, you live in NY, you would understand.
 

Thank you sir. I appreciate it. I don't mind asking. I object to lethal force.
 
Felis Leo said:
Are they unused, Chomsky? Are these rural hospitals in possession of large numbers of ventilators that are sitting idle? Or is it just that their numbers are lower or they have not been hit yet with a deluge of cases?
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Yeah, unused. It's in the first paragraph.
 

Sounds irrational.

People are in need life/death, surplus is diverted to them to save lives, and reimbursed/diverted back as necessary, during a massive national crisis.

Why don't you understand that.
 
BrotherFease said:
We do not have any spares. Cuomo is FORCING us to give up our own. And I highly doubt Cuomo is going to show he cares about upstate NY now.
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My reply was predicated upon the data contained in the article you presented in support of your OP.

Here are the key paragraphs below, where I bolded the relevant statements:

Are you saying the article is not accurate?
 

Distributing resources where they're most needed seems like a really normal thing for a governor to be doing in a crisis.
 

It's an ancient story:

NYC thinks it's all that, the rest of the state begs to differ.
 

How many cases in rural New York versus in the city?

If the answer is “few to none” then the medical resources should be allocated to where there is an ongoing crisis rather than hoarded like they were toilet paper or bullets.

The faster the virus is contained the less chance it has of spreading into said rural areas.
 
Cuomo's own health department warned him about this back in 2015.
 

Sort of what Kushner was trying to say about the Federal stockpile. It is a shame that for partisan reasons so many here vilified him for it.

If Trump were a decent person he should not seek re-election due to the strain this has put on his family. I think he is to vain to do this.
 
Cardinal said:
Distributing resources where they're most needed seems like a really normal thing for a governor to be doing in a crisis.
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Also, the people who voted for Andrew Cuomo are mainly located in New York City. Any elected official who fails to work to save his core constituency over those who voted against him is seeking his own doom.
 
Felis Leo said:
Are they unused, Chomsky? Are these rural hospitals in possession of large numbers of ventilators that are sitting idle? Or is it just that their numbers are lower or they have not been hit yet with a deluge of cases?
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Based upon the article the poster used to support his OP, it would seem they indeed are sitting idle. Unless someone can present evidence otherwise?

If you go there, you'd have to imply the same bias for every governor and also Trump too. Are you willing to go there?
 
Apparently Trump did the same thing with 3 million masks that were being sent into Canada, which as a result only has something like a week's supply left for it's HCP's.

At this rate, we will be completely ally-free in short order. "America First" means "America Alone".
 
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Upstate New York has traditionally been a drain on the rest of the state, not the other way around. You all contribute far less in taxes than you receive back. Downstate (city, Long Island) fund most of the state budget.

Regarding the article, good. If you're not using equipment, send it where it's needed.
 
Felis Leo said:
Also, the people who voted for Andrew Cuomo are mainly located in New York City. Any elected official who fails to work to save his core constituency over those who voted against him is seeking his own doom.
Click to expand...

I don't think I'd put it quite like that because what you're describing is a perfectly corrupt motive. However, if the area that's hardest hit is NYC and if the more rural areas are less hit and have supplies they can spare, then not redistributing supplies where they're most needed is negligence. Directing resources where they're needed is his job.
 

So you would allow life-saving equipment to sit unused in upstate New York, thereby getting people who need it killed, in order to make some gesture intended to be moral about valuing lives equally? You'd let people die in NYC who didn't have to die, for this gesture? And that is treating lives equally to you? NYC residents can just go die because we need to show more rural New Yorkers that we value their lives by leaving machines there gathering dust?

If it's not in use, there's no reason for it to stay there when it could be saving a life.


ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that he would use the National Guard to take ventilators and protective equipment from hospitals and other health care facilities in upstate New York where they're not in use to deploy the lifesaving equipment in the New York City area.

"I'm not going to be in a position where people are dying and we have several hundred ventilators in our own state, somewhere else," Cuomo said on Friday during his daily briefing. “I apologize for the hardship to those institutions — ultimately there is no hardship, if you don't get the ventilator back, I give you my personal word I will pay you for the ventilator — but I’m not going to let people die because we didn’t redeploy these ventilators."

Cuomo plans to use National Guard to seize ventilators from upstate facilities
 
So you are OK when the Fed does that as well, right?
 
Chomsky said:
Based upon the article the poster used to support his OP, it would seem they indeed are sitting idle. Unless someone can present evidence otherwise?
Click to expand...

Let me draw you a parallel: If the governor of any random Southern state, say, Alabama or Mississippi, proposed raiding rural hospitals that catered mainly to poor black citizens to seize their little-used ventilators in order to take them to higher income white cities, I imagine most people here, especially those on the political left would cry bloody murder and this was opportunistic racism further meant to leave poor black people to die. I doubt very many here would give those governors the benefit of the doubt that they were just trying to allocate limited resources, even if some of the the ventilators were idle at the time of their seizure.

Chomsky said:
If you go there, you'd have to imply the same bias for every governor and also Trump too. Are you willing to go there?
Click to expand...

Yes. Let us go there, Chomsky. It is my belief that the unspoken goal of everyone who seeks and achieves power is to remain in power and arrogate more power unto themselves. Those few who do not are they happy exception who prove the general rule.
 
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