President Donald Trump has made it clear he's going to use the force of government to acquire supplies for protecting healthcare workers and patients as the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak worsens. 

On Monday the president signed an executive order banning "hoarding" of essential medical supplies like masks, gloves and gowns currently in short supply at hospitals around the country.

These items, known as personal protective equipment, or PPE, are crucial in preventing the spread of the virus to those who are charged with taking care of us at a time when some experts are projecting hundreds of thousands of coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths.

Editor's note: The Trump administration is now criminalizing inventory of medical supplies. For this very reason, we are no longer importing such items and making them available to America, given that we can now be accused of "hoarding" for merely having inventory in our warehouse. This executive order is an attack on freedom and will dissuade importers from offering medical equipment in the United States, having exactly the opposite effect of what's intended. This is nothing short of government tyranny and theft of supplies by a government that failed to prepare, so now it's punishing the private sector for its own incompetence.

It's not yet known what definition of "hoarding" will be used by the government to visit commercial suppliers with "a knock on the door" to make them hand over their inventories to the federal government. The very existence of this order essentially declares that the government can hoard supplies, but the private sector cannot. It further confirms that the government's own supplies of medical equipment have run out, providing that the government suffers from a stunning lack of planning and preparedness which it is now exploiting to confiscate medical gear from commercial suppliers.