<story><title>The N95 mask shortage America can&apos;t seem to fix</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/news/n-95-shortage-covid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CydeWeys</author><text>This kind of widespread attitude is a stunning reversal from the American exceptionalism of decades past.  What do we call it, American fatalism?  American incompetence?&lt;p&gt;In World War II, we retooled our entire economy to embark on years-long total war against fascism.  Yet somehow now we can&amp;#x27;t re-tool less than 0.1% of our total industrial capacity to make PPE?  That&amp;#x27;s beyond us now?  Really?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The machinery to make this is extremely complicated and takes 6 months or more to build, by which time there may be no demand. No amount of invoking the defense production act would change this reality.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re more than 6 months into the pandemic at this point and no sign of reaching the end.  Under a different administration, the Defense Production Act would have been invoked immediately at the outset, onshore manufacturing capability of PPE would have been dramatically ramped up, and it would now already be paying dividends (more than 6 months later!) in the form of significantly increased onshore production of N95 masks and other PPE.&lt;p&gt;So yes, invoking the DPA absolutely would have changed the reality.  The problem is that we didn&amp;#x27;t do it, not that doing it wouldn&amp;#x27;t have worked (it would have).</text></item><item><author>Consultant32452</author><text>This is a complexity issue.  You can fashion a ventilator out of basically old vacuum cleaner parts.  N95 masks are spun with what amounts to an extremely fancy cotton candy machine that spins the fibers together.  The machinery to make this is extremely complicated and takes 6 months or more to build, by which time there may be no demand.  No amount of invoking the defense production act would change this reality.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;goatsandsoda&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;814929294&amp;#x2F;covid-19-has-caused-a-shortage-of-face-masks-but-theyre-surprisingly-hard-to-mak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;goatsandsoda&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;8149292...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;gt; In World War II, we retooled our entire economy to embark on years-long total war against fascism. Yet somehow now we can&amp;#x27;t re-tool less than 0.1% of our total industrial capacity to make PPE? That&amp;#x27;s beyond us now? Really?&lt;p&gt;Yes, because of a set of beliefs about market fundamentalism. The masks aren&amp;#x27;t as important as maintaining the existing product structure of society and proving that government intervention in healthcare can&amp;#x27;t work; if it shows signs of working, those paid to sabotage it will make sure it doesn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;Besides, denialism is widespread. There were all sorts of conflicting pieces of information about the effectiveness of masks and various other quick-fix cures. The &lt;i&gt;informational&lt;/i&gt; infrastructure is broken in fatal ways.&lt;p&gt;It became impossible for the US to ignore Japan once the ships started sinking at Pearl Harbor. The striking thing about today is that the huge casualties &lt;i&gt;haven&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; turned into a Pearl Harbor or 9&amp;#x2F;11 event, despite outnumbering both of those put together by orders of magnitude.</text></comment>
<story><title>The N95 mask shortage America can&apos;t seem to fix</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/news/n-95-shortage-covid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CydeWeys</author><text>This kind of widespread attitude is a stunning reversal from the American exceptionalism of decades past.  What do we call it, American fatalism?  American incompetence?&lt;p&gt;In World War II, we retooled our entire economy to embark on years-long total war against fascism.  Yet somehow now we can&amp;#x27;t re-tool less than 0.1% of our total industrial capacity to make PPE?  That&amp;#x27;s beyond us now?  Really?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The machinery to make this is extremely complicated and takes 6 months or more to build, by which time there may be no demand. No amount of invoking the defense production act would change this reality.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re more than 6 months into the pandemic at this point and no sign of reaching the end.  Under a different administration, the Defense Production Act would have been invoked immediately at the outset, onshore manufacturing capability of PPE would have been dramatically ramped up, and it would now already be paying dividends (more than 6 months later!) in the form of significantly increased onshore production of N95 masks and other PPE.&lt;p&gt;So yes, invoking the DPA absolutely would have changed the reality.  The problem is that we didn&amp;#x27;t do it, not that doing it wouldn&amp;#x27;t have worked (it would have).</text></item><item><author>Consultant32452</author><text>This is a complexity issue.  You can fashion a ventilator out of basically old vacuum cleaner parts.  N95 masks are spun with what amounts to an extremely fancy cotton candy machine that spins the fibers together.  The machinery to make this is extremely complicated and takes 6 months or more to build, by which time there may be no demand.  No amount of invoking the defense production act would change this reality.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;goatsandsoda&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;814929294&amp;#x2F;covid-19-has-caused-a-shortage-of-face-masks-but-theyre-surprisingly-hard-to-mak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;goatsandsoda&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;8149292...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rootusrootus</author><text>This is what happens when the free market becomes the accepted cultural answer to all problems.  We forget that the defining quality of good government is not efficiency, but effectiveness.</text></comment>