U.S President Donald Trump spent much of last week attacking governors across the country for allegedly being totally unprepared to cope with the arrival of Covid-19 patients. The governor of Illinois JB Pritzker has mocked Trump’s apparent unwillingness to release ventilators from a national stockpile for states experiencing major coronavirus outburst. He said in an interview that Trump doesn’t understand the word, Federal. Pritzker suggested the global pandemic would not have caused such deadly outbursts across the country. He said had the White House taken better preparatory steps as the Covid-19 death toll crossed 10,000 in the United States?
Governor JB Pritzker said, “The president doesn’t understand the word federal”. Point to be noted that President Trump previously criticized governors of various states for not having their own stockpiles to deal with the epidemic. Trump said, “If they had started in February building ventilators, getting ready for this pandemic, we would not have the problems we have today, and frankly, very many fewer people would die”. He said during his Friday Covid-19 briefing, “We have a federal stockpile, and they have state stockpiles, and frankly they were many of the states, they were totally unprepared for this. So we had to go into the federal stockpile, but we’re not an ordering clerk”.
Trump also said, “They have to have for themselves”. On Sunday, Pritzker said that it was the job of Trump administration to fill a national stockpile in the event of a major crisis because the US federal government has more capabilities to prepare for any epidemic than any single state. He said, “There’s no way that we can stockpile in anticipation of a pandemic that no one anticipated, and yet the federal government is responsible for doing precisely that”. He added, “We now know that intelligence sources and all the best advice that was given, was given in January and early February to the president and the White House, and they seemed to not have acted at all upon it. We would not have the same problems we have today, and frankly very many fewer people would die”.