in 2011..under Obama
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They were ready to roll whenever disaster struck California: three 200-bed mobile hospitals that could be deployed to the scene of a crisis on flatbed trucks and provide advanced medical care to the injured and sick within 72 hours.
Each hospital would be the size of a football field, with a surgery ward, intensive care unit and X-ray equipment. Medical response teams would also have access to a massive stockpile of emergency supplies: 50 million N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed.
In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics.
“In light of the pandemic flu risk, it is absolutely a critical investment,” he told a news conference. “I’m not willing to gamble with the people’s safety.”
The state, flush with tax revenue, soon sank more than $200 million into the mobile hospital program and a related Health Surge Capacity Initiative to stockpile medicines and medical gear for use in outbreaks of infectious disease, according to former emergency management officials and state budget records.
But the ambitious effort, which would have been vital as the state confronts the new coronavirus today, hit a wall — in 2011, the administration of DEMOCRAT governor Jerry Brown, cut off the money to store and maintain the stockpile of supplies and the mobile hospitals. The hospitals were defunded before they’d ever been used.
Much of the medical equipment — including the ventilators, critical life-saving tools that are supposedly in short supply in the current pandemic was allowed to expire without being replaced.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators
in 2011..under Obama
ExpressLane (04-02-2020)
But... but..... Sanctuary cities!
Gotta have that bullet train and provide for all those illegal immigrants and their offspring
ExpressLane (04-02-2020)
cancel2 2022 (04-02-2020)
Now..... let me post a crucial part of the linked LA Times article that the shit head OP conveniently left out....
Funny how supposed "fiscal conservatives" who normally cheer spending cuts suddenly try to portray them as irresponsible when they were done by Democrats.But the ambitious effort, which would have been vital as the state confronts the new coronavirus today, hit a wall: a brutal recession, a free fall in state revenues — and in 2011, the administration of a fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who came into office facing a $26-billion deficit.
And so, that year, the state cut off the money to store and maintain the stockpile of supplies and the mobile hospitals. The hospitals were defunded before they’d ever been used.
Much of the medical equipment — including the ventilators, critical life-saving tools that are in short supply in the current pandemic — was given to local hospitals and health agencies, former health officials said.
“When you’re stretched, prevention and readiness, future needs — unfortunately, that’s what gets cut,” said state Sen. Richard Pan of Sacramento, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, who fought the cuts as a first-term assemblyman.
OP = Typical right-wing bullshit smear propaganda.
C'MON MAN!!!!
From the "typical right-wing bullshit smear propaganda" outlet the Los Angeles Times?
Together, these two programs would have positioned California to more rapidly respond as its COVID-19 cases exploded. The annual savings for eliminating both programs? No more than $5.8 million per year, according to state budget records, a tiny fraction of the 2011 budget, which totaled $129 billion.
At its height, the state’s stockpile held more than 50 million N95 respirators, but without continued funding, that supply dwindled.
Some were used during California’s wildfires and not replaced, and others went past their expiration date.
As the coronavirus arrived in California, that supply was down to 21 million.
Now there is an urgent demand for respirators to protect healthcare workers from becoming infected by their patients. Earlier this month, California’s Public Health Department announced that it would be releasing millions of respirator masks from the stockpile, but warned that some are past their expiration date and thus “are approved for use only in limited, low-risk circumstances,” not for treating patients with COVID-19.
In response to questions, the department said all 21 million are past their expiration date.
The department said it now had 900 ventilators “on hand,” but didn’t clarify what that means. That’s 1,500 fewer than the original stockpile.
California is now trying to procure more.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators
Dr. Howard Backer spent years preparing the state for a flu pandemic and then watched it all fall apart.
Schwarzenegger was in his second year as California governor when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. The tremendous suffering caused by the disaster troubled him, recalled Dr. Cesar Aristeiguieta, who was Schwarzenegger’s emergency medical director from 2005 to 2007 and is now an emergency physician in Houston.
The governor “was very concerned by the images he was seeing on TV,” he said. “He wanted to do something to prepare the state for future calamities.” One strategy Schwarzenegger greenlit was the mobile hospitals.
“They were not like a ‘M*A*S*H’ tent on TV,” said Aristeiguieta, who supervised the startup of the program. “They were fully insulated, HVAC-equipped, semi-permanent tents. They had ventilators, a full complement of medications, and they would roll out in 18-wheelers with [a Highway Patrol] escort. They had sleeping quarters for the staff — really comprehensive.”
Other features included an emergency room, an intensive care unit, an operating room and surgical wards, according to state records.
The mobile hospital program was created with earthquakes in mind — the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the San Fernando Valley had killed at least 57 and injured about 9,000. The governor’s Health Surge Capacity Initiative, including the stockpiles of respirators and ventilators, was geared toward a flu pandemic. The state Legislature allocated $214 million in startup costs, state records show.
Maintenance and storage costs for the programs were about $5.8 million a year, according to state records — $1.7 million for the hospitals and $4.1 million for the medical stockpile.
The funding to maintain the hospitals and the stockpile of medical supplies was zeroed out in 2011.
In a budget message that year, Brown said the programs had been set up to counter “a potential influenza pandemic which did not occur.”
The Emergency Medical Services Authority was given a year to try to find another funding source to keep the hospitals going. Backer scrambled to save them by reaching out to the private sector but was unable to raise the money.
“We really tried hard to convince people that this is a worthwhile investment,” Backer said. “It was quite disappointing.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators
WHY DON'T THE IDIOT OP AND HIS IDIOT CHEERLEADER LEGINA LESION WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE $26 BILLION DEFICIT BROWN INHERITED FROM HIS REPUBLICAN PREDECESSOR AHNULDT SHVAZZENEGGAH?????
C'MON MAN!!!!
domer76 (04-02-2020)
Why won't you acknowledge....
....a brutal recession, a free fall in state revenues — and in 2011, the administration of a fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who came into office facing a....
...$26-billion deficit...
...left behind by REPUBLICAN ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Why do right-wing trolls always deal in half truths or outright lies?
Oh wait.... it's because you're scum.
Never mind.
C'MON MAN!!!!
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