COVID-19 is raging in the USA, the hotspot is the megacity of New York. In one day alone, 562 people died there – and the peak of the spread does not seem to have been reached yet. For days one has heard dramatic appeals from New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio and from New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo that 60,000 beds are missing.
According to Cuomo, New York is at the end of its capacity. According to the governor, there is a lack of ventilators, face masks and protective clothing – the city will need another 3,000 ventilators by Monday alone, otherwise there is a risk of collapse.
Conditions like on Ebay
But the pandemic is also hitting the health system hard in other places in the US, especially urban centers such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit. An uphill battle for medical supplies has developed between the states. According to Cuomo, they are like Ebay – whoever pays the most for medical products receives the bid. But US President Donald Trump refuses to comply with the demands of many governors and to switch to central procurement.
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Trump fears criticism from rural regions, where his electorate is to be found above all, who oppose state paternalism, says the USA correspondent for Deutschlandfunk Thilo Kößler.
The counter-Trump
In Kößler’s opinion, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has made a name for himself as a counter-Trump who bluntly tells the truth, who points out grievances, admits his own mistakes and has thus gained immensely in credibility. Even if this is why many Democrats want Cuomo as a US presidential candidate, he has already made it clear that he does not want to run – and will not run against his best friend Joe Biden.
But President Donald Trump’s polls are also pointing upwards. Around 48 percent of US citizens agree with his crisis management according to a Washington Post poll.
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