Mass. Governor Charlie Baker coordinated with BJ's Wholesale to get a shipment of 2M N95 masks...they were all "sized" (stolen) by the Feds. The governor then coordinated with Patriots owner Robert Kraft to use the patriots private jet to go get 1M masks. Thank goodness to the Kraft family and their support in this situation. There has been 0 transparency or audit trail with where these masks are going that the Feds are seizing. If I were Charlie Baker I would call up the National Guard and tell them to retrieve the masks that were sized by any means necessary. This is an absolute disgrace, and blatant theft by the Feds.
They are being reallocated (with strong indications being that it's for political gain by the current administration and to help vulnerable congressional candidates) or given to private entities.
This is yet another example of something that would be the greatest or one of the greatest presidential scandals in US history, but is hardly noticeable given the background level of scandal and distraction.
Respond to me, don't downvote me. Also, explain how Blue Flame Medical started and got its inventory, and how inventory from Operation Airbridge were procured/where they went.
>If I were Charlie Baker I would call up the National Guard and tell them to retrieve the masks that were sized by any means necessary. This is an absolute disgrace, and blatant theft by the Feds.
you are not the first to suggest this. and, in fact, the massachusetts national guard defended the shipment from kraft's plane to ensure it was not seized upon arrival.
by all appearances, the federal government is stealing and redirecting life saving and critical equipment on the basis of cronyism and political loyalty. this is an attack on the population of the states being stolen from.
make no mistake: just a bit further down this very road is the dissolution of the union between the states that comprise the country.
The same happened all over europe. European countries seizing equipment in transit toward other european countries. Even France did it (despite Macron's insistance on European cooperation).
The title is misleading. The FBI and DHS are seizing shipments of PPE.
> Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks.
Turns out there is a black market for PPE right now. The FBI should be investigating odd sales, like the one described in the article. Some of them will be black market dealing taking PPE away from hospitals that need it.
This is the part that bothers me...
> But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure.
So, after they showed it was for a hospital and the FBI (who investigates federal crimes like black market deals) was satisfied. The the DoH wants to step in and redirect until a congressional rep steps in. That's the odd part to me.
> The the DoH wants to step in and redirect until a congressional rep steps in. That's the odd part to me.
Not the DoH, DHS, Homeland Security. Whose oversight of the COVID-19 management is being coordinated with Jared Kushner.
It has been heavily implied, sometimes outright stated, that some of these "redirections" are going to states who are "being nice" to the President.
I would be entirely unsurprised to learn that others are going to "battleground" states (in the election sense, not the disease sense). Or to "government authorized private contractors" for resale (with its own due sense of irony).
>The the DoH wants to step in and redirect until a congressional rep steps in. That's the odd part to me.
Doesn't seem odd to me "we're right, you're wrong and we're not changing course because that would be a tacit admission that you're right and we're wrong" is a pretty standard knee jerk response from government agencies that are used to getting their way.
I suspect that Dr. Artenstein picked up on this right away and that's why he called whichever congressman he called.
This headline is somewhat misleading as the shipment in the OP was not seized.
> The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure. I remained nervous and worried on the long drive back, feelings that did not abate until midnight, when I received the call that the PPE shipment was secured at our warehouse.
Someone close to me has contacts and friends in Hong Kong. One offered to send him a box of masks for free(I think just surgical masks, not N95). The plan was to give a few to friends/family, and his wife's coworkers, who are in-home caretakers for the elderly. The rest would be donated to a hospital or similar. But the box never arrived. It hit customs and was seized.
Nurse here. As the epidemic started to get international, I went online and bought a couple boxes of N95 masks, gloves, glasses, and Tyveks. I went to the store and got a few litres of grain alcohol. I told my friends and family this would become a pandemic. They did not believe me.
These items were still easy to find two months ago. What I cannot comprehend is why was I preparing for this when most institutions were not taking this opportunity to do the same.
I question the same. Either hospital supply chains were incompetent or underfunded (or both). Perhaps sacrificed on the recent trend of “lean” in the healthcare system.
The title is somewhat clickbait-ish. The FBI and DHS have raided a shipment, which they thought was not meant for a hospital. Once they understood it was meant for a hospital, they let it flow.
The actual article does not talk about any PPE being seized by FBI or DHS. It
talks about FBI agents questioning the author when he was inspecting samples
of a shipment of PPE before authorizing purchase, and about his learning that
DHS was considering redirecting the PPE. But it does not say any PPE was
actually seized.
LA Times originally reported government seizures of PPE weeks ago.
In separate news from a different source (PBS Newshour), some hospitals are reporting protective gear from state and federal stockpiles that is completely unusable: masks 10 years past its expiration date, masks for children, masks that are rotting [1].
My guess: These two stories are related. The government had enough masks / PPE on paper, but never actually checked it was usable. No one intended this to happen, it just sort of fell through the cracks, and all the paperwork said everything was OK.
Now that huge amounts of physical masks are actually needed, they can't get by anymore on paperwork that doesn't reflect reality.
The stockpile probably has a (not officially acknowledged) main purpose of protecting the essential parts of government if there's an outbreak: soldiers, intelligence, Congress, etc.
Since people actually started physically checking the masks in government stockpiles, behind the scenes bureaucrats have been panicking because they suddenly found out there won't be enough PPE to protect the government, and the market's so tight and the supply chain is so stretched that they just can't simply buy it, there's way too much demand.
So they've decided they need to rebuild the stockpile. The government's reasoning is probably that what really matters is that the "people who matter" in government have what they need. If civilian doctors get sick, and some of them die, that's (seen by government bureaucrats as) an acceptable price to pay to be sure the government itself is protected.
This sounds pretty horrible, but I'm not sure they're completely wrong. For example, what if Russia invades Europe or China lands troops in California next week, the US Army starts to deploy in response, but gets paralyzed by a huge coronavirus outbreak and all available PPE's already been used?
Seems to me like this kind of ethical question should go through the public political process. I'm not sure why they aren't simply honest about why they're doing it. Trying to hide it suggests some bad motive. Maybe it's to hide the original screwup of not checking the stockpile properly. Maybe they have OPSEC concerns about not tipping our adversaries off that this would be a great week to start a war, since the US Military's effectiveness is temporarily crippled by lack of masks.
Anyone know how to file an FOIA request to try to force the government to tell us what's happening to seized masks?
> My guess: The government had enough masks / PPE on paper, but never actually checked it was usable. No one intended this to happen, it just sort of fell through the cracks, and all the paperwork said everything was OK.
No, Republicans in congress very specifically cut the budgets that were supposed to be used to rotate out expired materials. It wasn't accidental, it's a case of refusing to pay the insurance bill and then acting shocked when you're in a car crash.
It also took a big hit from the sequestration, like everything else in the government, but the budget was already underfunded to begin with because DHHS was associated with Obamacare and Republicans wouldn't approve any spending there.
They did the best they could with the money they had and focused on drugs instead of things like masks, which have a harder "cut off" for efficacy and were seen as easier to acquire in the heat of a crisis. But masks eventually have an expiration date too, and if you never rotate them they will eventually go bad too.
> After using up the swine flu emergency funds, the Obama administration tried to replenish the stockpile in 2011 by asking Congress to provide $655 million, up from the previous year’s budget of less than $600 million. Responding to swine flu, which the CDC estimated killed more than 12,000 people in the United States over the course of a year, had required the largest deployment in the stockpile’s history, including nearly 20 million pieces of personal protective equipment and more than 85 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
> “We recognized the need for replenishment of the stockpile and budgeted about a 10% increase,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “That was rejected by the Republican House.”
> Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms on the Tea Party wave of opposition to the landmark 2010 health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The new House majority was intent on curbing government spending, especially at HHS, which administered Obamacare.
...
> “It just was never funded at the level that was needed to purchase new products, to replace expiring products and to invest in what we now know are the really necessary ancillary products,” said Dara Lieberman, director of government relations at the Trust for America’s Health, a nonpartisan public health advocacy and research group.
It sounds like federal agencies are stepping in to investigate and prevent price gouging. Good. That is their job. If this wasn't happening, there would be even less PPE available for hospitals. Of course when you are talking about something at the scale of what is happening in the country right now, there are going to be imperfections in the system, and those imperfections will get reported on. That should not be taken as indicative of the state of things overall, but merely as exception reporting.
The news aspect of event has been incredibly depressing. There are commonly outright lies being presented as if they are valid representations of things that are happening in the world. Sometimes that is simply a part of life, and the consequences are relatively (to this) minimal, but in this situation, this type of reporting is getting people killed.
Despite the increase of government enforcement activity, not every price increase constitutes price gouging (no matter how abnormal the price seems).
State laws are toothless and many resign their regulation in the face of an event that lasts for 30+ days, as it accurately suggests the problem isn't going away if it hasn't by then and is probably bigger than the state.
The market has expanded and there is a war for resources.
The price is the market price and is a necessary market signal. Any 2-bit lawyer can defend this now, enjoy. Two the state's attorney general, don't waste public resources on this.
The governments fully capable of creating a price ceiling and subsidizing on top of that.
The market signals are abundantly clear and are a necessary motivating factor to solve the supply constraints.
>It sounds like federal agencies are stepping in to investigate and prevent price gouging
This is not correct. There is overwhelming evidence that the federal government is seizing private supplies of masks for redistribution. I find accounts like this quite chilling, note that the federal agents don't dispute that these are the property of a hospital, it takes (political)force to keep their stuff:
"After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure."[1]
The Defense Production Act gives the federal government pretty far reaching powers to control and seize goods needed to fight covid-19. If they claim you're hoarding, they can seize it, AFAIK without a warrant.
The real question is, will the US voters living in the states which are recipients of the seized PPE be _more_ or _less_ likely to vote for the perpetrators of such malfeasance.
[+] [-] hitpointdrew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway5752|6 years ago|reply
This is yet another example of something that would be the greatest or one of the greatest presidential scandals in US history, but is hardly noticeable given the background level of scandal and distraction.
edit: related example - ventilators, not ppe - with potus tweets on the matter embedded https://www.cpr.org/2020/04/08/colorado-coronavirus-ventilat... edit: other reporting on the matter https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-..., https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241...
Respond to me, don't downvote me. Also, explain how Blue Flame Medical started and got its inventory, and how inventory from Operation Airbridge were procured/where they went.
[+] [-] cryoshon|6 years ago|reply
you are not the first to suggest this. and, in fact, the massachusetts national guard defended the shipment from kraft's plane to ensure it was not seized upon arrival.
by all appearances, the federal government is stealing and redirecting life saving and critical equipment on the basis of cronyism and political loyalty. this is an attack on the population of the states being stolen from.
make no mistake: just a bit further down this very road is the dissolution of the union between the states that comprise the country.
[+] [-] Zhenya|6 years ago|reply
https://www.wcvb.com/article/3-million-masks-ordered-by-mass...
Edit: Removed accidental amp link.
Touchy bunch around here with all the downvotes for helping.
[+] [-] cm2187|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarf21|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 762236|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VectorLock|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mfer|6 years ago|reply
> Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks.
Turns out there is a black market for PPE right now. The FBI should be investigating odd sales, like the one described in the article. Some of them will be black market dealing taking PPE away from hospitals that need it.
This is the part that bothers me...
> But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure.
So, after they showed it was for a hospital and the FBI (who investigates federal crimes like black market deals) was satisfied. The the DoH wants to step in and redirect until a congressional rep steps in. That's the odd part to me.
[+] [-] FireBeyond|6 years ago|reply
Not the DoH, DHS, Homeland Security. Whose oversight of the COVID-19 management is being coordinated with Jared Kushner.
It has been heavily implied, sometimes outright stated, that some of these "redirections" are going to states who are "being nice" to the President.
I would be entirely unsurprised to learn that others are going to "battleground" states (in the election sense, not the disease sense). Or to "government authorized private contractors" for resale (with its own due sense of irony).
[+] [-] Quinner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|6 years ago|reply
Doesn't seem odd to me "we're right, you're wrong and we're not changing course because that would be a tacit admission that you're right and we're wrong" is a pretty standard knee jerk response from government agencies that are used to getting their way.
I suspect that Dr. Artenstein picked up on this right away and that's why he called whichever congressman he called.
[+] [-] thecolorblue|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomim|6 years ago|reply
So it's not going to them!
[+] [-] cameldrv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hitpointdrew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VectorLock|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lurquer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cma|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway894345|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anm89|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistersquid|6 years ago|reply
> The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure. I remained nervous and worried on the long drive back, feelings that did not abate until midnight, when I received the call that the PPE shipment was secured at our warehouse.
[+] [-] goda90|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f0ok|6 years ago|reply
These items were still easy to find two months ago. What I cannot comprehend is why was I preparing for this when most institutions were not taking this opportunity to do the same.
[+] [-] rubidium|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yoric|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingadd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdonis|6 years ago|reply
The actual article title is: "In Pursuit of PPE".
The actual article does not talk about any PPE being seized by FBI or DHS. It talks about FBI agents questioning the author when he was inspecting samples of a shipment of PPE before authorizing purchase, and about his learning that DHS was considering redirecting the PPE. But it does not say any PPE was actually seized.
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
Submitted title was "The FBI and DHS are seizing shipments of PPE intended for hospitals". Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22926309 about not doing that.
[+] [-] csense|6 years ago|reply
In separate news from a different source (PBS Newshour), some hospitals are reporting protective gear from state and federal stockpiles that is completely unusable: masks 10 years past its expiration date, masks for children, masks that are rotting [1].
My guess: These two stories are related. The government had enough masks / PPE on paper, but never actually checked it was usable. No one intended this to happen, it just sort of fell through the cracks, and all the paperwork said everything was OK.
Now that huge amounts of physical masks are actually needed, they can't get by anymore on paperwork that doesn't reflect reality.
The stockpile probably has a (not officially acknowledged) main purpose of protecting the essential parts of government if there's an outbreak: soldiers, intelligence, Congress, etc.
Since people actually started physically checking the masks in government stockpiles, behind the scenes bureaucrats have been panicking because they suddenly found out there won't be enough PPE to protect the government, and the market's so tight and the supply chain is so stretched that they just can't simply buy it, there's way too much demand.
So they've decided they need to rebuild the stockpile. The government's reasoning is probably that what really matters is that the "people who matter" in government have what they need. If civilian doctors get sick, and some of them die, that's (seen by government bureaucrats as) an acceptable price to pay to be sure the government itself is protected.
This sounds pretty horrible, but I'm not sure they're completely wrong. For example, what if Russia invades Europe or China lands troops in California next week, the US Army starts to deploy in response, but gets paralyzed by a huge coronavirus outbreak and all available PPE's already been used?
Seems to me like this kind of ethical question should go through the public political process. I'm not sure why they aren't simply honest about why they're doing it. Trying to hide it suggests some bad motive. Maybe it's to hide the original screwup of not checking the stockpile properly. Maybe they have OPSEC concerns about not tipping our adversaries off that this would be a great week to start a war, since the US Military's effectiveness is temporarily crippled by lack of masks.
Anyone know how to file an FOIA request to try to force the government to tell us what's happening to seized masks?
[1] https://youtu.be/A4YZxctxh8w?t=159
[+] [-] paulmd|6 years ago|reply
No, Republicans in congress very specifically cut the budgets that were supposed to be used to rotate out expired materials. It wasn't accidental, it's a case of refusing to pay the insurance bill and then acting shocked when you're in a car crash.
It also took a big hit from the sequestration, like everything else in the government, but the budget was already underfunded to begin with because DHHS was associated with Obamacare and Republicans wouldn't approve any spending there.
They did the best they could with the money they had and focused on drugs instead of things like masks, which have a harder "cut off" for efficacy and were seen as easier to acquire in the heat of a crisis. But masks eventually have an expiration date too, and if you never rotate them they will eventually go bad too.
https://www.propublica.org/article/us-emergency-medical-stoc...
> After using up the swine flu emergency funds, the Obama administration tried to replenish the stockpile in 2011 by asking Congress to provide $655 million, up from the previous year’s budget of less than $600 million. Responding to swine flu, which the CDC estimated killed more than 12,000 people in the United States over the course of a year, had required the largest deployment in the stockpile’s history, including nearly 20 million pieces of personal protective equipment and more than 85 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
> “We recognized the need for replenishment of the stockpile and budgeted about a 10% increase,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “That was rejected by the Republican House.”
> Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms on the Tea Party wave of opposition to the landmark 2010 health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The new House majority was intent on curbing government spending, especially at HHS, which administered Obamacare.
...
> “It just was never funded at the level that was needed to purchase new products, to replace expiring products and to invest in what we now know are the really necessary ancillary products,” said Dara Lieberman, director of government relations at the Trust for America’s Health, a nonpartisan public health advocacy and research group.
[+] [-] blhack|6 years ago|reply
The news aspect of event has been incredibly depressing. There are commonly outright lies being presented as if they are valid representations of things that are happening in the world. Sometimes that is simply a part of life, and the consequences are relatively (to this) minimal, but in this situation, this type of reporting is getting people killed.
[+] [-] pm_me_ur_fullzz|6 years ago|reply
Despite the increase of government enforcement activity, not every price increase constitutes price gouging (no matter how abnormal the price seems).
State laws are toothless and many resign their regulation in the face of an event that lasts for 30+ days, as it accurately suggests the problem isn't going away if it hasn't by then and is probably bigger than the state.
The market has expanded and there is a war for resources.
The price is the market price and is a necessary market signal. Any 2-bit lawyer can defend this now, enjoy. Two the state's attorney general, don't waste public resources on this.
The governments fully capable of creating a price ceiling and subsidizing on top of that.
The market signals are abundantly clear and are a necessary motivating factor to solve the supply constraints.
[+] [-] xnyan|6 years ago|reply
This is not correct. There is overwhelming evidence that the federal government is seizing private supplies of masks for redistribution. I find accounts like this quite chilling, note that the federal agents don't dispute that these are the property of a hospital, it takes (political)force to keep their stuff:
"After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure."[1]
1) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2010025
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] KorematsuFred|6 years ago|reply
Day by day it is getting harder to understand who are the good guys these days.
[+] [-] detaro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hitpointdrew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] onyva|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damon_c|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grayed-down|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treis|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] howmayiannoyyou|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] op00to|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|6 years ago|reply
This PPE was going to this hospital, or another.
[+] [-] fc_barnes|6 years ago|reply