Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, when every third word out of every government official's mouth was "ventilators?" Everybody knew we needed 450,000,000 ventilators every year, indefinitely, or everyone was going to die, everywhere.

Yeah about that:

When New York became the U.S. epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo scoured the globe for life-saving equipment as the daily death toll in the state approached 800.

Models had estimated that New York would need as many as 40,000 ventilators to aid people suffering the worst symptoms of the virus, he said.

The state acquired 8,555 ventilators at a cost of $166 million and 1,179 X-ray machines for $86.4 million, state officials told POLITICO this month. And now they're stacked in warehouses across New York with no plans to distribute them or put them to any immediate use; Covid treatments have largely moved away from ventilators, and hospitals say they have plenty available to deal with their immediate needs.

Wait a second: So you're saying government leaders panicked, freaked out, ignored the science and just went absolutely nuts in the midst of the pandemic hysteria? How can this be??

But hey, at least we all learned a valuable lesson from this embarrassing, ridiculous charade, right? Right?

"We always said the pendulum will swing the other way and critics would say there was too much in reserve," [a Cuomo spokesman] said in a statement. "Given the option where lives were on the line, we'd do the same thing and — in preparation for the next global supply chain shredding pandemic — there needs to be enough medical equipment on hand."

Yep, nothing learned at all. Well done, team!

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