https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/2020/05/09/f76a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html
It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer.
“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.
Bowen persisted.
“We are the last major domestic mask company,” he wrote on Jan. 23. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.”
In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.
...
Factory equipment that could produce a quarter-million N95 respirator masks a day sits idle at Prestige Ameritech’s factory outside Fort Worth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/federal-government-spent-millions-to-ramp-up-mask-readiness-but-that-isnt-helping-now/2020/04/03/d62dda5c-74fa-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html
In September 2018, the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.
The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.
But HHS did not proceed with making the machine.
The project was one of two N95 mask ventures — totaling $9.8 million — that the federal government embarked on over the past five years to better prepare for pandemics.
The other involves the development of reusable masks to replace the single-use variety currently so scarce that medical professionals are using theirs over and over. Expert panels have advised the government for at least 14 years that reusable masks were vital.
That effort, like the quick mask machine, has not led to a single new mask for the government’s response.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/04/02/us-exports-masks-ppe-china-surged-early-phase-coronavirus/5109747002/
The White House and congressional intelligence committees were briefed on the scope and threat of the coronavirus in January and February, but President Donald Trump has not stopped exports of key medical equipment – a move taken by at least 54 other countries so far.
The data show how U.S. manufacturers stepped up production and cleared out inventory to supply protective medical equipment to China for weeks, even as the threat of the coronavirus became clear. The CDC reported its first case in the United States on Jan. 20. Within the next two weeks, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had declared the disease a public health emergency.
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is not so much 'bout the kinda government we got. is not even a party thing. keep in mind it were bush who started a organized effort to get a federal level pandemic response pandemic, and then bush reduced... son reduced father's efforts. post 9/11 and after reading a book about the spanish flu, the younger bush had an epiphany and vast expanded 'pon even his father's efforts.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?189676-1/national-strategy-pandemic-preparedness
full speech-- worth viewing.
'course obama killed many pandemic programs only to resurrect 'em following the pandemic scares during his administration.
is less 'bout government or economics as is individuals making bad decisions over and over. same kinda government and economics and with different individuals under different circumstances, you got folks looking prescient as 'posed to being ignoramuses. sometimes is same individuals making the bad and good decisions.
regardless, we coulda'/shoulda' had n95 masks available for americans soon after the pandemic first became recognized. had a plan for such. unlike many nations, we had spent billions in prperation for pandemics, before letting those efforts evaporate. heck, like good americans is s'posed to do, we had developed unique tools to make streamlined ppe possible. unfortunate, once masks became a curiously political issue, then the chance o' government driven efforts to ramp up mask production evaporated. *shrug* too many mistakes repeated.
free market and democracy doesn't cause the stoopid which leads to most real problems. people is stoopid and people is ubiquitous.
HA! Good Fun!