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It seems many companies, prudently, had stocks of masks for their employees. Mastercard donated 25k masks and Goldman Sachs 20k[1]. My question is why the US g
by tuna-piano 7y ago
It seems many companies, prudently, had stocks of masks for their employees. Mastercard donated 25k masks and Goldman Sachs 20k[1].
My question is why the US government didn't have a bigger stockpile of them? We treat national security products with such deference, but yet defense against pandemics has been an afterthought.
[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-institutions-share-stockpiles-of-face-masks-with-nyc-hospitals-11584479352 https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-institutions-share-st...
- tedunangst 7y agoThey were used up for swine flu and never restocked. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/face-masks-in-national-stockpile-have-not-been-substantially-replenished-since-2009/2020/03/10/57e57316-60c9-11ea-8baf-519cedb6ccd9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/face-masks-in-...
- 8bitsrule 7y agoHere are two looks inside the Strategic National Stockpile from NPR, the first from 2016. The first story reports the loss of 50,000 state and local health officials. The second from Mar 2020, reported that the SNS 'currently holds about 30 million simple surgical masks and 12 million of the more protective N95 masks....' Compare those numbers to what's needed. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/27/483069862/inside-a-secret-government-warehouse-prepped-for-health-catastrophes https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/27/4830698... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/814121891/why-even-a-huge-medical-stockpile-will-be-of-limited-use-against-covid-19 https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/8141218...