Government, especially in the time of crisis, should be able to get resources to the people who most need them.

When one area in a country is hit with a disaster — a fire, a hurricane, a flood — it is easy to see that resources need to be allocated for recovery.

It gets harder, as now, when not just our entire nation but the whole world is fighting against a pandemic.

The epicenter in the United State has been New York City. Governor Andrew Cuomo was right to order that upstate hospitals not using their ventilators make them available to downstate counties where COVID-19 patients would die without them.

We were moved when the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, on April 4 tweeted, “New York needs more ventilators, and we are answering their call for help. We’ll be sending 140 ventilators to help NY because Oregon is in a better position right now. We must do all that we can to help those on the front lines of this response.”

It reminded us of how, after the terrorists’ attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Oregonians filled several airplanes as visitors to the city, trying to rebuild its economy as a tourist mecca.

That same Saturday, April 4, China sent a planeload of ventilators to New York.

All last week, we received bits of news from varied places making contributions to help New York. A charitable organization in Maryland trucked 27 ventilators to the Northeastern Industrial Park in Guilderland Center. The ventilators were originally, before the pandemic, meant for Guatemala but the charity decided the need was now greater in New York.

We also heard from Carmel, a city of about 92,000 in Indiana, which decided, after testing all of its city staff and the residents of all of its nursing homes for COVID-19, it would, in conjunction with a local laboratory, send 50,000 COVID-19 test kits to New York City. 

“We must be able to look back on this moment in time and know that we did all we could to help fight the battle against this historic and deadly virus,” said Carmel’s mayor, Jim Brainard. “Countries that have tested widely have seen more success with leveling the curve and reducing the number of people catching the virus because they are able to quarantine those who test positive.”

Meanwhile, here in New York State, we were distressed with some politicians using this crisis to divide, rather than unify. On April 6, Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara tweeted, “The Governor is using the National Guard to SEIZE equipment from our upstate hospitals who are already rationing limited resources AND taking in #COVID19 patients from NYC. He doesn’t know when they will need their ventilators and simply reimbursing them afterwards will not help!”

We applaud Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy stance; she tweeted: “Need to tackle the #coronavirus problem where it is greatest & downstate will step up when need grows here! So proud to represent @AlbanyMed & @SPHPnews who have not hesitated to accept #COVID19 patients from NYC!”

On Easter Sunday, Cuomo returned 37 ventilators that he said were donated “out of the blue” by a Niskayuna nursing home. New Yorkers are still dying by the hundreds each day but by following the governor’s directives, and county directives as well, it looks as if enough New Yorkers heeded the orders to stay home and, when out, observe social distancing.

This may have prevented the worst fears we had as New Yorkers, as Americans, as human beings — watching from afar as we did the medical system being overwhelmed in Italy with doctors having to decide who would live and who would die.

On Easter Sunday, Cuomo said that the anticipated apex in New York had become a plateau with the change in total number of hospitalizations statewide down for another day.

So we have some hope that here in New York State we may have been through the worst of it. But, in other parts of the world, we can see the nightmare is just beginning.

As a member of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, we have heard from an editor in South Africa, Anton van Zyl. On the day he sent his email, South Africa had more confirmed cases of COVID-19 than any other country in Africa — 1,934. We are aware that, while New Yorkers worried 30,000 ventilators weren’t enough, there are countries in Africa with just three ventilators.

“In South Africa the lockdown period has now been extended to the end of April. It started on 21 March and just about all economic activity ground to a halt ...,” wrote van Zyl.

“Most of the (remaining few) independent weekly newspapers in the country closed down for the period. We simply could not. It would mean our correspondents are without any income. It would mean the small printing company that we use is without an income. (And they employ half a dozen or so people from rural areas who solely rely on the one or two day per week job to put food on the table of families.)

“But overall we could not let our communities down. We felt like the band on the Titanic. We must keep on playing.

“And we are producing the most beautiful music during this period. The past week I was simply taken aback when working through the copy posted by our correspondents … They managed to get to remote areas and reflect on how COVID-19 is affecting ordinary rural people.

“In a small village at Hlanganani one of our correspondents interviewed the owner of a barbershop. The honesty of the young man struck me. He appreciates the government’s efforts to fight this ‘unseen’ enemy. He supports the call to isolate and stay at home, but he cannot stop working.

“His small business is the only means of income for him and his siblings. He is afraid that, should he be unable to put food on the table, they may go out and steal food. In that specific community the community deals harshly with criminals and, if caught, they will be killed in a ‘bundu court’ manner. In all likelihood the community will then burn down his shop.”

“I live in an area where, if you steal from someone else, you get stoned and burnt to death,” the young barber said.

To return to our original idea, we are grateful that our government has, thus far, been able to get resources to the people who need them. The shut-down here has not meant that anyone is facing starvation or death by stoning if forced to steal in order to eat. Our local school districts have seen that the children who regularly get free lunches at school with federal funds are still being fed.

Albany County has set up a mental-health helpline to offer guidance and comfort to people suffering from anxiety or stress. The sheriff has transformed an unused wing of the jail to shelter and help homeless people.

Beyond government, charitable organizations have pitched in. The National Guard has, in Albany County, delivered literal tons of donated food to people who need it. So far, United Way has raised nearly $600,000 to deal with the coronavirus crisis, said Peter Gannon, president and chief executive officer of United Way of the Greater Capital Region, on Saturday.

“We talk a lot at United Way about how people in our community are one bad day away from being in serious financial straits but no one really anticipated this collective bad day we all go through together,” said Gannon. “But we are getting through it.”

Even if the coronavirus has reached its apex in New York State, there is still much difficult work ahead as the economy is rebuilt and individuals continue to struggle with the disease and its fallout.

State governments across these United States have taken the lead during the crisis but it is now essential that the federal government fairly apportion the aid that is needed for recovery.

The bipartisan National Governors Association is calling for $500 billion in federal funding for states.

On Sunday, Cuomo cited a Kaiser Health analysis that found “Nebraska, Montana, for example, Minnesota are getting approximately $300,000 per COVID-19 case. New York State gets approximately $12,000. How can that be?” the governor asked.

We should not resort to politics as usual but rather insist that our elected representatives in federal government work together to be sure resources are spent wisely and delivered equitably.