[Farm93]

Dr. Cody answers this question in the presser I posted.  Short answer is there aren't enough trained critical care personnel.

FEMA not only provides infrastructure & facilities but also sources personnel. But perhaps there is a nationwide constraint. If so, that should be part of the answer. Just saying "our hospitals don't have enough staff" is an insufficient answer.

Whether it is insufficient or not, it's still the reality. And there is always going to be a limit to supply at some point.

I agree. But come out and say that. Don't give a half-donkey's butt answer that only considers local capacity.

Not that it ISN'T bad out there, but US media coverage has been relentlessly negative, far more so than other nations.

https://fortune.com/2020/11/29/covid-19-...ve-stories

The coverage is not really that hard to understand 
1 - The US news market is more commercial than most other nations.    Bad news sells.  Good news doesn't.
2 - The US news market is largely in decline - Pushing good news almost certainly means unemployment for the author and even publisher.
3 - Few countries, if any, in the world are underperforming their pandemic capabilities given economic and health care resources as the USA.  So that failure is rather shocking.   Shocking stories sell especially well.  

FWIW - The negative story rate makes sense to me, and still I would not have imagined that hospitals around the USA would convert their parking structures into temporary COVID-19 units.   Reading about that is far more interesting than reading that the USA is doing better with this pandemic on a death per capita basis than a few major northern hemisphere nations the UK, Spain and Italy.

The sports comparable would be for local media coverage to imply that the 11th place Pac-12 basketball coach is doing better than the 12th place team.   When we all know the story that would get the clicks would be to speculate on coaches that could replace that 11th place coach soon.  The 11th place team may even win from time to time, but that wouldn't mean the overall coverage would suddenly become positive for that soon to be fired coach.

The USA situation is a bit like that 11th place team/coaching situation.   We are doing better than a few countries and have done a few things well from time to time, but the bigger story remains covering the failures of our approach and our, now-fired, leader.

[Farm93]

Dr. Cody answers this question in the presser I posted.  Short answer is there aren't enough trained critical care personnel.

FEMA not only provides infrastructure & facilities but also sources personnel. But perhaps there is a nationwide constraint. If so, that should be part of the answer. Just saying "our hospitals don't have enough staff" is an insufficient answer.

Whether it is insufficient or not, it's still the reality. And there is always going to be a limit to supply at some point.

I agree. But come out and say that. Don't give a half-donkey's butt answer that only considers local capacity.

Not that it ISN'T bad out there, but US media coverage has been relentlessly negative, far more so than other nations.

https://fortune.com/2020/11/29/covid-19-...ve-stories

The coverage is not really that hard to understand 
1 - The US news market is more commercial than most other nations.    Bad news sells.  Good news doesn't.
2 - The US news market is largely in decline - Pushing good news almost certainly means unemployment for the author and even publisher.
3 - Few countries, if any, in the world are underperforming their pandemic capabilities given economic and health care resources as the USA.  So that failure is rather shocking.   Shocking stories sell especially well.  

FWIW - The negative story rate makes sense to me, and still I would not have imagined that hospitals around the USA would convert their parking structures into temporary COVID-19 units.   Reading about that is far more interesting than reading that the USA is doing better with this pandemic on a death per capita basis than a few major northern hemisphere nations the UK, Spain and Italy.

The sports comparable would be for local media coverage to imply that the 11th place Pac-12 basketball coach is doing better than the 12th place team.   When we all know the story that would get the clicks would be to speculate on coaches that could replace that 11th place coach soon.  The 11th place team may even win from time to time, but that wouldn't mean the overall coverage would suddenly become positive for that soon to be fired coach.

The USA situation is a bit like that 11th place team/coaching situation.   We are doing better than a few countries and have done a few things well from time to time, but the bigger story remains covering the failures of our approach and our, now-fired, leader.