How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Found on Twitter....From the New Yorker

By Susan B. Glasser

April 9, 2020

How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?

Quote

...America was watching, shocked, as doctors and nurses pleaded for protective gear and medical equipment such as ventilators. Ries was asked to help start a Web site that would match hospitals and suppliers. Sure, Ries said, he could have something up and running by Monday. What followed over the next two weeks was an inside glimpse of the dysfunction emanating from Trump’s Washington in the midst of the pandemic, a crash course in the breakdown that has led to nurses in one of the wealthiest countries in the world wearing garbage bags to protect themselves from a virus whose outbreak the President downplayed until it was too late to prepare for its consequences...

...Earlier this week, the office of the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services released a survey of three hundred and twenty-three hospitals in forty-six states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and it found “widespread shortages of PPE,” and also of other equipment. After the report was released, Trump claimed it was “wrong,” tweeted that it was “Another Fake Dossier!,” and attacked the principal deputy I.G. who prepared it because she had also served during the Obama Administration. Trump, of course, omitted the fact that she is a career official who also served in the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations....

.https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-coronavirus-and-how-the-united-states-ended-up-with-nurses-wearing-garbage-bags

[2Ask]

If you look at the photo, they have proper PPE gowns underneath the garbage bags. Maybe the bags just serve to extend the life of the PPE? Like wearing a surgical mask over an N95. They look pretty safely garbed