NY needs at least an additional 0k ventilators. According to some models.
Pick a different model, and it's likely to need fewer than 10k. Perhaps as low as 65k. In which case, NY is already adequately equipped. Or, according to the same model, it might need 13k.
If you're really risk averse, then you want those additional 30k. Otherwise you didn't fight for your people, you let people die, bad politician.
Extend that upper-bound reasoning across the country, and we need to build at least 150k or so ventilators in the next 3 weeks, whatever it takes. Then, odds are, most of them will not be used even once and then sit around for years until they rot, ensuring nobody'll be buying any for a few years.
But that's if you sum up the worst case scenarios for each and every town and city. That is a very unlikely outcome--worst case everywhere. This is a giant waste of a lot of money. "Ah, but stimulus!" you say. "Ah, but the workers are out and it's hard to keep social distancing in place. Your insecurity in managing uncertainty is putting people at risk of death." It always pays to listen to the arguments that say we're wrong, otherwise we just believe we're infallible and always right. No histrionics needed, over-the-top displays of mea-culpa, just acknowledge the errors so they might not be repeated and carry on.
So if you can't use the worst case numbers for each area, summed, what do you do? You aggregate the numbers and run the probabilities again. And you wind up needing far less of any supply--you just don't know where the worst case situations will arise. How do you know where to send them?
You continue to run the probabilities. The longer a projection covers, the huger the uncertainty. Three days out? That uncertainty shrinks. A lot. A whole lot. Worse case might say you'll need 10k more in 25 days, but if you run the numbers in 21 days you see that the worst case is you need 1k more, and in 24 days you'll have a real clear number. So you look at the time it takes to identify, pack, ship, and set up the equipment. One day is too short; a week is too long. And something could come up to goose the numbers by 50--a nursing home gets zapped, a funeral service, biker gang, whatever--so you make sure that areas have the # of ventilators they'll need according to the worst case in their area in the near term.
Of course, that means you wind up having to tell the politicians that are convinced that every area needs to have on hand everything necessary for the worst-case scenario for just their area, however far out the model is projected that they probably won't need what they firmly shout they need.
The other reason for holding out is because what happens if a poorer, less equipped city than NY has a problem? NYC has a bunch of services centralized in one place, with the customers being all over the country, and benefits greatly from this. Other places have less far-reaching economies because of that centralization, consolidation (all driven by capitalism). That means greater assets, which means, presumably, under the wise guidance of a firmly (D) government has been preparing for both climate change and a health emergency. If one of the poorer areas suddenly has an outbreak, they'll be in much worse shape. Then we'll have the governors of early states saying the lives of their citizens are more important than the lives of Americans elsewhere. As is usual, what might be an attempt at equitableness is perceived as oppression.
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