State government resorts to covert plot to acquire supplies for pandemic

The president's newest messaging is that the national emergency stockpile "was never intended" to supplement state and local supplies during a public health crisis but was meant for federal agency use only; implying that the US government is being extremely generous by giving states access to it, and that states should be largely responsible for supplying themselves. Recent activity by the federal government is making the latter extremely difficult if not impossible for states to accomplish, however.

Such was the case when the state of Massachusetts attempted to buy a shipment of 1 million N95 masks for use by healthcare workers and emergency responders in their state from a Chinese supplier; this shipment was confiscated as somehow illicit at the port of New York by an unspecified federal agency, which intends to redirect the masks however the administration decides (they won't be going to Massachusetts, which ordered them).

This forced the state government of Massachusetts to have to resort to some unorthodox methods for acquiring the medical supplies they need. This report describes a secret agreement the state entered into with the owner of the New England Patriots football team to use the team's private jet transport to ferry another shipment of masks from China directly to Boston, effectively end-running around the federal agency that has been scrutinizing and seizing the freight in New York.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2JGx6SJ