Missing Medical Supplies Become Part of 2020 Debate

By Philip Wegmann

April 01, 2020

 

Things keep going missing, and President Trump isn’t the only one who has commented on it.

Hand sanitizer disappears and face masks vanish and the latex gloves that guard the much-needed hands of doctors and nurses seemingly dissolve into thin air. It is a problem, health care professional from across the country tell RealClearPolitics, another headache they really don’t need while battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump insinuated that the missing essential supplies were being sold on the black market, prompting the Joe Biden campaign to say that he is spreading “a grotesque conspiracy theory.” The Trump campaign fired back, telling RCP that Biden is making theft “a political issue.”

The controversy stems from remarks that Trump made on Sunday and that he reiterated on Monday. How, the president asked, could hospitals suddenly need so many more masks? The exponential demand and subsequent shortage, he said, was evidence that “something is going on.”

"Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000—and we have that in a lot of different places," Trump noted. He did not give any examples Sunday. He said Monday, when pressed by RCP in the Rose Garden, that the information had been relayed to him by “a tremendous power in the business.”

Is the administration worried that critical supplies are becoming black market contraband? And has the president directed federal law enforcement to look into the matter? The White House did not respond on the record to numerous requests for comment. Neither did a spokesman for the Department for Justice, who told RCP that, as is customary, the DoJ cannot comment on specific investigations.

The severity and cause of the problem is speculative. The doctors and nurses who spoke to RCP, many of them on condition of anonymity, don’t care much about the politics. One nurse was working in a tuberculosis ward in New York. She went to check on a patient. Masks had disappeared by the time she returned. “Someone in five short minutes took two brand-new boxes,” she lamented. “What the hell is wrong with this picture?”

A doctor detailed to an intensive care unit in Michigan during the emergency told RCP his hospital is locking down personal protective equipment, even hiding it in some cases, to prevent theft. And about masks: “We also have to ‘check out’ an N95 with administration each day in order to conserve resources where they’d traditionally be readily available.”

Keeping these resources under literal “lock and key” has become standard procedure at hospitals around the country. Whether that is to prevent the anecdotal outpatient with sticky fingers from stocking their own home or someone on staff with an eye for profit remains to be seen. Either way, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered state police to investigate.

“Not just people taking a couple or three, I mean just actual thefts of those products,” Cuomo said at a March 6 press conference. “I’ve asked the state police to do an investigation, look at places that are selling masks, medical equipment, protective wear, feeding the anxiety.”

States have authority to prosecute theft. So does the federal government, especially so in this case when federally funded resources are at stake and after Attorney General Bill Barr promised that anyone sitting on resources to make a profit would be “hearing a knock on the door.”

Cuomo did not respond to RCP’s request for comment by press time. He did, however, question what the president was saying during a Monday press conference.

“In terms of a suggestion that the PPE equipment is not going to a correct place, I don't know what that means. I don't know what he's trying to say,” Cuomo said. “If he wants to make an accusation, then let him make an accusation. But I don't know what he's trying to say by inference.”

What is and isn’t being said by inference or otherwise has become part of the presidential campaign, along with much else about this global health crisis.

"Trump failed to prepare our country for the coronavirus outbreak, instead spending months disregarding experts' warnings and misleading the public about the threat we face,” Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, told RCP. “But rather than taking responsibility for his egregious mismanagement and using the power of the Defense Production Act to ensure our medical professionals on the frontlines have the protective equipment they need for their own safety, as Joe Biden has called on him to do, Trump is attacking doctors, nurses, and hospitals with a grotesque conspiracy theory.”

The Trump campaign responded:

“When Joe Biden calls this a ‘conspiracy theory,’ he’s saying that health care workers reporting equipment theft are lying.  Gov. Cuomo was so alarmed about large-scale theft from hospitals in New York that he said he’d launch a state police investigation,” said Trump campaign Communication Director Tim Murtaugh.

“There are news stories across America detailing the same problem,” he told RCP. “We all should be concerned with theft that keeps important equipment from medical professionals and patients, but Joe Biden inexplicably has decided to make this a political issue.”

When, and if, the two candidates meet on a debate stage (Biden remains the presumed Democratic nominee amid a largely suspended primary race) they can hash it out. In the meantime, physicians, nurses and other medical personnel worry whether they will have what they need to stay safe while doing their job.

An ER doctor in Indiana told RCP that a patient had attacked hospital staff while trying to steal masks. “All supplies are closely watched,” he said, including the N95 respirators that doctors need to better filter out all airborne particles. But the question of theft, in his words, was “a red herring.” He wanted to know, instead, “what they are going to do to address the massive drug shortages that will be coming.”

Another first responder, this one in New Jersey, said that there were shortages. But was it petty theft or part of a larger attempt to make an illegal buck? After a week away from the hospital, the doctor couldn’t say. She had tested positive for coronavirus.