Is there a number listed anywhere for the number of people in the US who are presently on a ventilator? Google fails me.
I'm trying to figure out why there is a shortage as it appears that 160k are available. Are 160k people using those machines right now? My search suggests that isn't the case, but I can't find actual numbers. If the demand is due to expected need, what assumptions are being used?
Before we all go crazy and start shouting TRUMP!! I'm not looking to excuse him, I'm genuinely wondering why we're having such a massive supply shortage given the number available.
It would be appropriate for the government to help step in and centralize the response and resource distribution. Unfortunately, there is a lot of evidence from states and hospitals that not only is this not happening, but that they being put in position to compete with each other financially.
Because of this situation, the answer to your question is unknown. A much larger number of patients with COVID-19 are requiring ventilator care and a different kind of ventilator treatment than other patients. Additionally, patients with COVID-19 are spending weeks in the hospital under ventilator care. Being an infectious disease, a lot of the need is related to anticipated growing need as the illness spreads, which can be difficult to predict. Large hospitals in major metro areas are easier on that front, using the majority of resources. However, if in turn vents aren't available to smaller areas like Albany GA, a local outbreak can ravage the system and kill lots quickly. How much extra capacity should we let a vulnerable area have knowing a larger area has more predictability and flexibility? What really matters is resource availability at peak. Keep in mind that when cases are at their peak, the hospital will still be flooded with patients, many still on vents, from the prior weeks where the illness was almost at its peak already.
Ventilators are not instantaneously deployable, and there is enough uncertainty in need to make this a difficult problem. It is rendered impossible by the lack of a centrally coordinated response quantifying need and distributing appropriately. Unfortunately, this lack of transparent centralized coordinated response also obfuscates an accurate awareness of the enormity of our failures.
But this is a common theme with all things Trump. Muddy the waters. Make it so that one piece of data which does not fit the whole can be used to argue a logically untenable position. Make it so that someone cannot use a full data set to paint a clear and complete picture of just how untenable that position is. Make it so that someone who wants to believe in the untenable position can be comfortable seeing it as a difference of opinion. Harp on all the ways where the person with an opposing position uses ad hominem and other logical errors. Use that to conclude they are arguing in bad faith. Justify anyone pointing to your use of ad hominem, etc. as appropriate because they do the same.
All of this is done to prevent the one thing everyone is sorely lacking: reflecting on their own position independent of that of others -- using engagement with others as a means of finding the potential faults in your own position.