Opinion: Lifesaving ventilators will sit unused without a national data-sharing effort
In Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s book “Poverty and Famines,” he argues that famines arise not from a lack of food, but from a system that promotes unequal distribution of existing food. That logic easily applies to shortages of ventilators and other medical supplies for fighting Covid-19.
As states run short of masks and other personal protective equipment, tests, ventilators, and drugs, they have largely been sourcing these much-needed resources on their own. This free-for-all has prompted unnecessary stockpiling and uneven distribution of resources based on purchasing power instead of on patient need. In tandem, the federal government has also been amassing its own supply.
