If this article was dated January I might care. Everyone in the hospitals from nurses to management knew exactly what is coming but did nothing. And nothing has even happened yet, wait till the virus actually arrives in a few weeks. Did any hospital plan or ask for help properly? Did any nurses union raise the issue? Anyway they have numerous studies from Africa where they can't afford equipment, rather than the lack…
Nurses and other staff are not there to make decisions based on firsthand geopolitical and epidemiology research. They have enough day-to-day work to do. This information should be provided to hospitals and other healthcare workers from higher up. This level of resource use / need may be even above what the local management should analyse, because ideally there would be regional stock available to shift to the clinic…
Increasingly a lot of hospital administration is very profit-focused. Not all but maybe most; where it's not, it's increasing, and where it's not supposed to be it often is, but hidden.
What this means is that the focus of hospital administration is often not on epidemiology and public health, even though it should be. It should include that more. It's focused more on squeezing out the maximum from each provider in terms of billable hours and patient contacts. When you're focused on stuff like that, you're not thinking about public health.
And so we have the consequence of that now. I don't think this is the only problem -- there's also government overregulation, rent-seeking provider monopolies that artificially restrict supply of services, and lack of coverage for patients -- but it's part of it. In general, at an abstract level, healthcare in the US has become very focused on protecting the interests of the established system, and less so on the interests of citizens and patients. It's a house of cards with several problems at once, getting hit by the perfect storm.