According to reports, the USNS Comfort, the hospital ship homeported in Norfolk and that Trump promised to send to NYC, is undergoing significant maintenance and won’t be able to deploy for several weeks. That’s unfortunate, but the Navy has other resources that could be pressed into service on both coasts.
The Wasp-class amphibious assault ships each have 4 full operating rooms, plus two emergency operating rooms, and are each equipped to provide intensive medical assistance to 600 casualties, and have their own x-ray facilities and labs. Four of these ships are home-ported on the East Coast (3 in Norfolk and one more in Mayport, FL, just outside of Jacksonville). An additional four of them are home-ported in San Diego. They don’t have the capability of the dedicated hospital ships such as the Comfort, but they could certainly serve to take the pressure off hospitals in places such as the NYC metropolitan area for things such as traumatic injuries, emergency surgeries, childbirths, etc., so that the hospitals could concentrate on COVID-19 cases when the seemingly inevitable crunch arrives.
The USS Iwo Jima, one of the ships of this class, provided invaluable assistance during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That was a different situation, but it demonstrates the willingness and ability of the Navy to respond to civilian emergencies if it is given the orders to do so.
I’m sure some of these ships may be deployed or undergoing routine maintenance, but I also have little doubt that some of them are available on very short notice. But they’re not going to deploy on their own. The President, who appears more devoted again today to attacking his “enemies” and to describing how under-appreciated he feels, has to act like he’s an actual Commander-in-Chief rather than a spoiled toddler. And I fear that he’s about as capably of doing that as I am of growing wings and flying.