| HN really needs to be more aggressively critical of comments like these, that try to construct arguments on ideological foundations without any deeper investigation of the relevant facts. First, production capacity is not available, as the VP of Prestige Ameritech tried to explain to everyone months ago [1]. The equipment required to manufacture suitable PPE is big and expensive and there isn't enough demand to offset the capital or the maintenance costs for the equipment, except when there's suddenly a pandemic and everyone wants PPE yesterday. Despite this, Prestige Ameritech -- having foreseen this scenario a long time ago and spent over a decade begging different administrations to prepare for it -- offered to ramp up production early this year. The Trump administration said no [2]. The issue has now been made even worse with everything reopening nationally, which has not only caused a huge spike in hospital demand for PPE, but has also caused a huge spike in demand for masks specifically [same article]. And these are just the immediate, short-term, direct issues that should be easy for outsiders to grasp. There are many other related, harder-to-solve problems: > The blame, experts agreed, goes beyond any single person or agency but is the culmination of decades of change in the nation’s manufacturing capabilities, a worldwide shift in how goods are delivered and the country’s long battle with medical costs. Warnings about how these factors set the stage for shortages during a worst-case scenario went unheeded, leaving the country unprepared for a pandemic. > By the time the coronavirus arrived, it was too late. The nation was left with massive shortages and a ruptured supply chain that won’t be an easy fix. [3] Furthermore, prices did rise dramatically, and -- gasp! -- this did not magically fix the supply chain [4]. Allowing unregulated price gouging would not (and did not) change the supply shortage. It would have just been a pinata party in the shape of the US, and would have left front line medical workers without necessary PPE while wealthy people hoarded supplies. An effective, less corrupt federal government could have dramatically increased PPE supply just by taking the pandemic seriously at the start and putting competent people with relevant expertise in charge of oversight and response. There still would have been shortages, but they would have been far less severe and they would largely have been resolved by now. [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/8113874... [2]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/10/21319960/n95-masks-shor... [3]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/07/01/coronavirus-u... [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/21/why-dont-h... |