For the Next Pandemic, Run the Trump Playbook in Reverse

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Bloomberg Opinion will be running a series of features by our columnists that consider the long-term consequences of the crisis. This column is part of a package on public health. For more, see Max Nisen on creating a faster vaccine, Virginia Postrel on the renewed promise of telemedicine and Faye Flam on a grim future for the medical profession.

“Allow me to say as I told her personally today, the governor of Oregon, Governor Kate Brown — her unilateral decision to send 140 ventilators … to New York, to me was in the very highest American tradition of loving your neighbor. And when I talked to Governor Cuomo, Mr. President, he said they never asked Oregon for the ventilators and Governor Brown hadn’t even called him to tell him that she was doing that. It really is remarkable.”

So spoke Vice President Mike Pence during Saturday’s coronavirus briefing, and on one level, he’s right. With ventilators arguably the nation’s most precious piece of equipment, it was remarkable that a governor on the West Coast sent 140 of them to a state in dire need on the other side of the country. The next day, Washington Governor Jay Inslee returned more than 400 ventilators to the federal government so that they could be used in harder-hit states.

“I’ve said many times: We are all in this together,” Inslee said.

On another level, however, the fact that Brown and Inslee had to take it upon themselves to ship unused ventilators suggests something appalling: The federal government, which is the only entity with the resources and capacity to truly manage this crisis, is missing in action.