The Health Commissioner on Feb 9 was still pretty early. That's 8 weeks ago, ancient history in this pandemic.

On Feb 25, over 2 weeks CDC said covid-19 was detected in the US (from travelers back from Wuhan) and wasn't a risk for spreading among the general public.

The flu is here every year but we don't cancel parades.

De Blasio on Mar 2 was a lot later.

> New York was warned years ago that they didn't have enough ventilators and had the opportunity to stock up, but chose not to.

That's misleading.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-tru...:

> A 2015 New York state report said that in the case of a “severe” pandemic, the state would be short about 16,000 ventilators during the peak week. But the report did not recommend buying 16,000 ventilators [emphasis mine], and did not indicate whether the state was at a fiscal position to purchase them.

> The state did not plan to increase its ventilator stockpile because it anticipated that in the event of a severe crisis, there would be shortage of trained staff to operate them and demand would outweigh any emergency stockpile.

> The report said the state had to balance the likely ventilator shortage with the need for adequate funding for current and ongoing health care expenses.

And even if New York had bought them, they'd still be significantly short. Apparently current projections say they'll need 30,000 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-need...).

I'm sure there are 16,000 people that would be thankful that you were 14,000 ventilators short instead of 30,000.

> I'm sure there are 16,000 people that would be thankful that you were 14,000 ventilators short instead of 30,000.

Yeah, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. And ultimately, the idea that NY should have bought those ventilators back then is a deeply political cheap shot indented to distract people from the current administration's own lack of preparedness.