The line of thinking 'well there was a risk so any amount of money was worth it' - doesn't really hold.
People are rightly upset by 'mask gougers' why would they not in the face of 'hospital bed gougers' charging $500 000 / bed?
Resource utilization always matters, even in the face of life and death, costs have to be justifiable in the context of risk.
I agree that given unknowns, we have to err on one side, but there are and were ways to deal with such unknowns, for example, we have Spain, Italy, Korea etc. as guides.
It's also possible to 'stage' the creation of such projects without having to fully build them out, putting stages in places as necessary.
A 'million or 1/2 million dollars a bed' is utterly outrageous gouging, there's no rationalization for it whatsoever.
Where did I, or anyone else say 'any amount of money' or anything interpretable in that way?
There were credible scenarios, which could not have been discounted at the time, in which that capacity would have been needed. Spain set up emergency hospitals in convention centres, and a morgue in an ice rink. Those were exactly the model we prepared to follow in the UK.
As for the costs structure of the US model, frankly I have no idea. The NHS here works completely differently, suppliers do price gouge we're not immune to it, but that sort of thing can't really happen at the bed-provision level as that's an administrative rather than commercial issue.
People are rightly upset by 'mask gougers' why would they not in the face of 'hospital bed gougers' charging $500 000 / bed?
Resource utilization always matters, even in the face of life and death, costs have to be justifiable in the context of risk.
I agree that given unknowns, we have to err on one side, but there are and were ways to deal with such unknowns, for example, we have Spain, Italy, Korea etc. as guides.
It's also possible to 'stage' the creation of such projects without having to fully build them out, putting stages in places as necessary.
A 'million or 1/2 million dollars a bed' is utterly outrageous gouging, there's no rationalization for it whatsoever.