Huge difference, Smyrna.
Stores do not hand out N-95s. Stores do not lend out CAPRs. Cheap latex gloves are fine for a short term but durable and medical grade gloves are another. Gowns are a big deal now, and we have been short of them for ages. Nurses and Docs were using garbage bags and duct tape for a time just to have some protection.
Then you need good boot covers. Not shoe covers, boot styled ones that go up to the knee and above the gown line. And every time you take care of a sick patient and leave the room you have to decontaminate and strip all of this away and discard it. Imagine how many times a critically ill COVID patient has people in the room attending to them, there is probably a hundred dons and doffs a day per patient. Now imagine there are 400 or 500 patients with COVID at your facility, all needing 100 dons or doffs per day.
That is 40k N-95 masks per day for one hospital, plus equal gowns, boots and gloves.
For one hospital.
Which is why we have been reusing N-95s, we haven’t had a choice. There aren’t enough to go around. I keep mine in a paper bag in my office.
I get a new one each week.
And I consider myself lucky in this regard.
Governors can buy PPE, but they cannot force local manufacturers to retool and produce them. The problem is, they have to bid against 49 other Governors all trying to secure this stuff too and the Federal Government, who often outbids the states and keeps it for themselves.
Meanwhile, there are loads of manufacturers who are willing to retool but will not without the Federal government implementing the DPA. In fact, COVID funds that could have been used for a DPA PPE order were instead used to purchase Jet engine parts and body armor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/22/covid-funds-pentagon/
All of this comes down to a basic reality, the Federal Government failed to procure PPE or use the DPA to spur its production for no other reason than they wished to shift responsibility to the states so that they could shift blame. Same with testing supplies.
Governors do not have the resources, the technical expertise nor the authority to run a full blown pandemic, they were forced to do so due to the cowardice and the inaction of the Federal Government at the behest of the Executive Branch. It is a full throated betrayal of their sacred responsibility, to protect American citizens from all threats.
The NEJM got it right. Good on them.