Who would have thought that all of the spur-of-the-moment government spending we engaged in to "beat the virus" over the last several years would turn out to be mismanaged and reckless?
That certainly seems to be the case now, as it is being reported that about $200 million worth of Covid supplies that were purchased during the Covid era in New York have been fire-sold off for just $500,000, according to Fox 5.
Bill Hammond, senior policy fellow at the conservative-leaning think tank The Empire Center, told Fox: "People were dying. There was reasonable concern that it was going to keep getting worse."
Among the emergency orders made by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio was an order for 3,000 emergency ventilators that cost the city $12 million. One investigative reporter, Greg Smith, said of the purchase: "They put them in the corner or in the closet or something, and they never turned [them] on."
And now with de Blasio out of office, new Mayor Eric Adams is in the process of selling excess masks, medical gowns, and ventilators for "pennies on the dollar" in online auctions, the report says.
On source told Fox: "The advertisement in the auction was for ‘nonfunctioning medical equipment for scrap metal,’ and they sold it to this junk dealer on Long Island for $24,600. That works out to about eight dollars per ventilator."
In sum, the city wound up selling $200 million of Covid-era equipment for just $500,000.
"I mean, they're trying to sell it, so it's still usable. Why don't they keep it? Because, I mean, are we really comfortable with the idea that this will never happen again?" Smith asked.
Mayor Adams has said that the city requires a 90 day stockpile, which is why he is selling off the rest: "The charter calls for a 90-day stockpile. After that 90 days, we have to make a determination, of my understanding, either to auction it off, give it away, or discard."
