It shouldn’t take Patriots owner Robert Kraft to get Massachusetts Covid-19 supplies

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has stepped up to help the fight against the coronavirus outbreak in Massachusetts. On Thursday, one of the Patriots’ team planes will return from China filled with a supply of personal protective equipment that will go directly to a stockpile for the state.

According to the Wall Street Journal, getting the equipment was part of numerous global negotiations between state governor Charlie Baker and China. Baker reportedly asked Robert’s son, Patriots president Jonathan Kraft, to help order the masks and charter the plane to transport them back to the state.

Per the newspaper, the Kraft family put up $2 million to get the N95 masks, which is close to half the cost of the total order of 1.7 million masks. The majority of those (1.2 million) were placed on the Patriots’ plane, while the rest will come on a separate shipment.

“It is an honor for our family to be a part of this humanitarian mission,” Robert Kraft said in a statement, as transcribed by ESPN. “We knew that purchasing greatly-needed N95 masks and providing the Patriots plane to expedite their delivery to local hospitals would immediately help protect our courageous healthcare professionals.”

Yes, it’s awesome to see financially willing and able citizens like Kraft step up in the midst of a crisis. But it shouldn’t have to come to this. It shouldn’t require a billionaire NFL owner to supply healthcare workers with the proper equipment they need to fight a deadly pandemic.

Baker has been telling the federal government for weeks that his state needs more equipment. On March 20, Baker told President Donald Trump that the federal government was outbidding states like Massachusetts for supplies.

“We took seriously the push you made not to rely on the stockpile,” Baker said via WBUR on a governor’s call with the president. “I got to tell you we lost to the feds ... If states are doing what the feds want and trying to create their own supply chain, then people should be responsive. I’ve got a feeling that if somebody has a chance to sell to you or to me, I’m going to lose every one of those.”

Baker isn’t the only governor who’s faced this problem, and it’s affecting some of the states hit hardest by the pandemic. California’s Gavin Newsom and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer have both publicly addressed the difficulties of acquiring supplies, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo compared bidding against states to being on eBay. New York, Michigan, California, and Massachusetts are all among the states with the highest number of confirmed cases.

It’s hard to ignore the inconsistencies in terms of which states are receiving help and which aren’t.

On March 25, Trump said that states receiving what they request is a “two-way street” and that governors have to treat the administration well, too. He added in a press briefing on March 28 that he wanted the governors to “be appreciative” of what the federal government is doing.

In short, Trump is playing favorites.

Just look at Florida, which has reportedly received 100 percent of the state’s two federal requests. Governor Ron DeSantis was endorsed by Trump, and Florida is also home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts, like several other states, had to find an alternative in obtaining personal protective equipment (PPE), including the N95 masks. These respiratory protective masks are incredibly important, because they protect healthcare workers from airborne particles that could contain Covid-19.

The lack of protective equipment has been an issue for hospitals across the country. Former NFL DB Myron Rolle, who’s a neurosurgical resident at Mass General in Boston, told SB Nation in a recent interview that hospital personnel are being asked to reuse their masks.

The masks coming from China will reportedly go to a stockpile in Massachusetts so they can be distributed to hospitals throughout the states. Baker thanked the Kraft family on Twitter early Thursday morning for their efforts:

Kraft and the Patriots did something great, and they absolutely should be applauded for that. But Baker couldn’t even get his own federal government or president to help his state — he had to turn to a billionaire NFL owner to get it instead. Covid-19 is estimated by the White House to potentially claim anywhere between 100,000 to 240,000 American lives. The fact the U.S. government isn’t giving states the basic necessities needed to fight this is just shameful.