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How did the U.S. end up with nurses wearing garbage bags?

221 points by dankohn1 6y ago

darkerside 6y ago
There's a terrific debate to be had about the role of the federal government in a national emergency. Is it the air support for state led initiatives, or should it be more of a quarterback coordinating action across all state lines?
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  No, there's zero debate to be had. They actively intercept and confiscate medical supplies that states purchase to save their populations from dying. Blue states, I might add. Which is of course a complete coincidence. (And other countries haven't been immune to this either, but that's another story.)
  - sooheon 6y ago
    A: "there's a good debate to be had about the role of justice system, should it seek to rehabilitate or punish?" B: "no, there's zero debate to be had because this one judge was caught taking bribes" One is a question about purpose and design, the other is a bug in the implementation.
  - makomk 6y ago
    See, this is why it's lose-lose for the federal government. If they allow states to bid against each other for the same equipment, enriching shady middlemen and stockpilers, this is proof they've failed (see comment elsewhere in thread) - but if they seize those stockpiles and don't allow them to be sold at a massive markup to the highest bidder, they're actively intercepting medical supplies that states purchase to save their populations from dying. The American press has been loudly pushing both of these narratives at once.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sgift 6y ago
      Probably because the president (still the leader of said government) telling the press that his people shouldn't talk to governors which haven't been nice enough to him doesn't inspire confidence that the second part is done in the best interest of all states. Now, if the federal government would show that they don't just do it for selfish purposes that narrative would die down pretty fast.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      The lack of coordination and mixed messages have been a problem. Trump has publicly said governors should be fending for themselves, and has also been "punishing" states with governors he doesn't like by not taking their calls. States have no reason to trust the federal government to properly help them, and the federal government has shown no capacity or willingness to do anything but release funds.
- Fezzik 6y ago
  I would think when the type of need is uniform across all states (testing, supplies, containment rules, support for workers and businesses, etc...) and the only difference in each state is in the volume of the need, the Federal Government would take charge. It has more funds and the ability to mandate uniform rules. It also has access to people who are paid to be the smartest folks in the room in dealing with pandemics. This is what the CDC was designed for. Having 50 different states try to piece together a response to an international problem seems destined to... lead us exactly where we are - a day late and a dollar short. Avoiding this was predicated on not having a complete imbecile at the helm though. It really mucks everything up.
  - anticensor 6y ago
    Department of State should step in to restore fearless travel conditions as the pandemic is a situation preventing people actually practice statutorily guaranteed freedom to travel. EDIT: I looked up; the Department of Health or the Department of State would be more fit for purpose. Not the Department of Homeland Security, because TSA is actually a Travel Security Agency despite it is named Travel Safety Agency.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      > Department of Interior should step in to restore fearless travel conditions as the pandemic is a situation preventing people actually practice statutorily guaranteed freedom to travel. In spirit I don’t disagree but how can the Department of the Interior do this? What is the specific action? Also why would The Department of the Interior be responsible for travel conditions rather than something like The Department of Transportation? E: I still don’t follow, what action can be taken by any agency to make travel fearless in time of pandemic? Department of State carries out U.S. foreign policy. What can they do to change the reality of a pandemic?
      - deleted 6y ago
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      - anticensor 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
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  - deleted 6y ago
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- djaque 6y ago
  No, there might be a nice debate later, but this crisis isn't an exercise in theory. There are people dying right now because of an administration that downplayed the crisis, failed to react, and is now actively sabotaging our state level response unless officials perform personal favours to the president.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    None of that changes our ability to have that debate now. You're allowed to discuss current events on the internet. No one will get you for it.
  - tastygreenapple 6y ago
    People are dying because of China, not America.
- eli 6y ago
  A pandemic that affects all states and all countries in the world and requires almost unprecedented collective action to solve? How can forcing states to figure it out themselves possibly be beneficial? Why is the Governor of NY negotiating directly with Chinese suppliers? Why are states bidding against each for the same scarce equipment, enriching only the middlemen who have suddenly and suspiciously inserted themselves in the process?
  - sooheon 6y ago
    Great points in favor of a good QB. Fat middlement don't disappear with centralization though -- see: defense contractor fraud [1] [1]: https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/05/defense-contracting-fraud/ https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/05/defense-contracting-fr...
  - toasterlovin 6y ago
    FWIW, states like New York and California have larger populations and economies than most European countries. That, I think, is an argument in favor of being more hands off and letting the governors figure out what’s right in their state. They’ll have a much better understanding of what their local problems and capabilities are.
    - eli 6y ago
      No I don’t think it is. Their local problems are the exact same virus as everyone else’s local problems.
      - surge 6y ago
        No its not, for instance just population density is a huge factor in the spread of a virus. If you live in an area where people are fairly isolated or travel outside their region very little, than you don't need to do the same extreme lockdowns or shut down the economy to the same degree to prevent the spread. I live in a state that's barely being touched by this, and not because we don't have it, but because there are two large cities that have maybe 100+ cases or significant hospital load, and the spread is insignificant because its very easy for people to avoid each other and take basic precautions during interaction to prevent the spread. If you live in apartment buildings, 6 feet from your neighbor with only a wall to separate you stacked stories high with shared elevators, stairwells, hallways, and the majority of transport requires people to be in close proximity on sidewalks, buses, or trains, the factors and extreme measures needed to stop its spread are very different than someone living in Alaska or Idaho. Those people don't need to stay in their homes, they just need to avoid going anywhere unnecessary with large groups of people and wash their hands and cover their mouths. Some states have higher rates of obesity or other risk factors, some states have higher populations of elderly than others. One size fits all measures doesn't work, you need focused precision efforts determined by locals and the only thing they need from the umbrella governments is support in their efforts for needs they've determined are necessary.
- trhway 6y ago
  doesn't pandemic infection fall under interstate commerce, and thus is pure federal domain?
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    No. The Courts have ruled in the past that for public safety, states can restrict travel.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  Maybe there's a debate to be had about how the Federal Government should act but there shouldn't be a debate whether it should act and the article gives a good description of the Federal Government simply failing to act and even sabotaging action. The unconscionable and rather unbelievable.
- lmeyerov 6y ago
  There's a difference between having a terrific debate and changing the national stockpile website mid-pandemic to say "nah"
- shirro 6y ago
  Other federal systems face the same dilemmas. In Australia the powers of the states and federal government are set by the constitution. The feds don't have jurisdiction in many areas. It has to be a team effort. So they have whole of government meetings to work out a common, co-ordinated approach. We see a common message and have federal government support for the states but each state is free to implement measures appropriate to their local situation. I think this consensus driven approach is the only way it can work. The federal government implementing border security, helping with international trade, mobilising military, providing funding. States legislating isolation, enforcing law and order, organising hospitals and testing. Australia has a much smaller population, fewer states and less political extremes. It would be easy to dismiss our relatively good performance in this crisis as due to our isolation and geography. But I think our political system has worked well for us. Even though I don't like some of our political leadership and don't consider them very effective normally, even their worst efforts are looking good compared to what I see elsewhere in the world. I think in a crisis like this if you rely too strongly on a quarterback to take control you can get into a lot of trouble if your quarterback turns out to be useless or even detrimental. The elected king model is too risky. An executive controlled by the legislature is far more responsible and effective.
GeekyBear 6y ago
Just in time manufacturing is a recipe for disaster when you allow a single nation to do the lion's share of everyone's manufacturing, and that nation is the first to shut down. A decentralized manufacturing system with distribution through regional warehouses was more resilient, if less cost effective. Some states, California and New York among them, did create their own local stockpiles of ventilators and PPE after the bird and swine flu scares, but did away with them in the fiscal crunch after the financial meltdown. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-once-had-mobile-hospitals-and-a-ventilator-stockpile-but-it-dismantled-them/ar-BB11O8Gs https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-once-had-mobile... https://www.propublica.org/article/how-new-york-city-emergency-ventilator-stockpile-ended-up-on-the-auction-block https://www.propublica.org/article/how-new-york-city-emergen...
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  On the other hand the land in US in non coastal or agricultural places is very cheap. You can have whole factories build for critical supplies and just conserve them. When the crisis and unemployment hits - just put people there to work. This spare capacity can be maintained on the cheap.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    The last time we had a pandemic like this was 100 years ago. Do you honestly believe we'd maintain unused factories for that long and then start manufacturing modern medical equipment with century old technology?
    - twomoretime 6y ago
      There are other reasons to maintain domestic emergency capacity. We're still a bunch of apes living on a hostile rock. Except we also have war machines.
    - ReptileMan 6y ago
      No. We will update them from time to time. And of course we had three close calls in the latest 20 years - sars, mers and ebola. And btw - this is literally what 3M did with the N95 masks - they had spare production lines that turned on in a heartbeat https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-25/3m-doubled-production-of-n95-face-masks-to-fight-coronavirus https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-25/3m-double... This is 3M’s moment, one for which the staid, 118-year-old Minnesota manufacturing giant—the maker of Post-its, Scotch tape, touchscreen displays, and scores of other products—has been preparing for almost two decades. Coming out of the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, the company realized it wasn’t fully equipped to handle unexpected explosions of demand in the event of a crisis, or what it calls an “X factor.” It decided to build surge capacity into its respirator factories around the world. And with terrorist groups and state actors realizing that animal viruses are potent biological weapons, and legitimate research centers working on making viruses airborne - chances of another screeching halt in the next 10 years due to malice or incompetence are not that low.
matttproud 6y ago
The United States: your global leader in self-afflicted wounds.
- kelnos 6y ago
  You know what they say about us: the US will always do the right thing, after trying everything else first.
- krapp 6y ago
  Let's burn down the government so this never happens again!
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    We probably shouldn't burn it down but may be a good time for some strict anti nepotism laws. The presidents son in law should not be leading secret councils and managing the virus response. The presidents daughter should not be on the economic recovery council. This government has the worst people doing the most important jobs.
    - krapp 6y ago
      It's ironic that Trump was elected, among other reasons, because people believed he was honest due to not being or acting like a professional politician, and incorruptible due to being wealthy enough to be self-funded. And yet he's turned out to be the least honest, most corruptible president since maybe Nixon. If only there was a decades-long trail of publicly available sources that could have shed some light on his personality and dishonest character... ah well. At least his administration didn't use a private email server with flagrant disregard for security procedures, or get mixed up in a botched military raid that led to multiple civilian deaths. Oh wait... At least he's not a New York elite. Wait, no... At least he isn't a baby-eating pedophile cult leader and mass murderer. Or a Clinton. That's better.
      - wonderwonder 6y ago
de_watcher 6y ago
If it looks stupid but it works, it ain't stupid.
- smcl 6y ago
  I think the point is that it is a desperate measure that kinda-sorta works, but needn't have been necessary in the first place
- richbradshaw 6y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/kious-kelly-hospital-nurse-dies-trash-bags-2020-3?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/kious-kelly-hospital-nurse-d... https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-uk-nurses-forced-to-wear-bin-bags-test-positive-2020-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-uk-nurses-forced... so, doesn't really work no, but is a desperate measure which is at best better than nothing.
- anoraca 6y ago
  That used to resonate with me. And then I thought about how just because something worked once, that doesn't mean it isn't extremely risky and likely to fail on future attempts.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  If the code runs once and works, then it works. Until it doesn't work and it takes down all of production.
TomMckenny 6y ago
There is a difficult follow up to this. When the dust settles months from now and some 40% of the country becomes convinced none of these problems ever happened, how shall we prevent this or other fiascos next time?
- z9e 6y ago
  There's already movements being made in Japan and other countries to move manufacturing out of China, I'm hopeful policies will come out of this that get rid of the just-in-time supply chain for critical things like PPE for Dr's.
- akiselev 6y ago
  That 40% will jump on any excuse to pump up anti-Sino sentiment, regardless of whether they believe in the excuse or not. This might be a politically solvable problem regardless of which side holds power come January.
seh4 6y ago
>https://www.smh.com.au/national/billions-of-face-masks-sent-to-china-during-australian-bushfire-crisis-20200402-p54gjh.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/billions-of-face-masks-sent-... >More than two billion face masks sourced from countries around the world including Australia were sent to China at the height of the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan, according to official figures released by the Chinese customs service. >Employees of Chinese state-owned companies were directed to purchase whatever they could find in the way of masks and protective clothing to send back home in a massive humanitarian effort.
- seh4 6y ago
  >https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeDepot/comments/etth22/asians_buying_all_our_3m_dust_masks_coronavirus/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeDepot/comments/etth22/asians_bu... >My store is located in SoCal near a very young, Asian area. With the coronavirus news starting to catch more concern, the Asian population here is buying boxes and pallets of a specific 3M mask. >This is store 1072 East Brea. They also bought up all of our thermometers, as well as other medical supplies. It's looking more and more like the CCP wanted this to become a global pandemic.
  - dfcowell 6y ago
    Or a whole bunch of scared people were trying to do something to help their family back home. I'm an expat, living abroad, with a large group of expat friends. Everyone is doing the same thing - thinking about what resources we have access to relative to our families and friends back home, and wondering what we can send them and they can send us.
    - seh4 6y ago
      >Or a whole bunch of scared people were trying to do something to help their family back home. These people bought pallet-loads of masks, gloves, thermometers, and other supplies: >https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/euijsd/man_at_a_local_home_depot_clearing_out_all_n95/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/euijsd/man_at_a_... This wasn't people buying supplies for their family and friends back home. At best, it was profiteering (hoping to resell at a steep markup), and at worst, it was an organized effort by the CCP to weaken other countries, including the US.
101404 6y ago
"Interdependence" was a nice theory, but it seems to have it's limitations.
stock_toaster 6y ago
Kakistocracy at its finest, that's how.
sherr 6y ago
There's a tremendous amount of bureaucratic infighting and cluelessness in many countries just now (I'm in the UK). There have been debates for many years about streamlining the chain of command and responsibility in the USA; just think about the post-9/11 debates. I understand that the federal structure makes some things hard but it would seem to me that a proper central authority to manage a crisis like this would be very useful - but isn't this what FEMA is for? After the dust settles, some heads need to be bashed together.
- netsharc 6y ago
  I agree with the head bashing, sadly that probably won't happen. The incompetent will slap each others' backs saying "heckuva job!" and go home to their gold toilets..
- specialist 6y ago
  "There have been debates for many years about streamlining the chain of command and responsibility in the USA..." My takeaway from the 9/11 debacle is we learned that the Clinton Admin had a "shaking the tree" process. In response WTC bombing, USS Cole, embassy attacks, etc. There are always organizational problems. Reasons data isn't shared. Legal, turf, bureaucratic, inability to correlate with others, whatever. Their workaround was to have a daily standup where all the agency heads shared info. Bush Admin (eg Condi Rice) discontinued such nonsense, choosing to focus on Russia (ending bans on nuke testing, chemical weapons, missile defense). Trump Admin didn't choose to discontinue Obama Admin's preparedness so much as outright rejected anything and everything Obama related, and pandemic stuff was swept away with the rest.
- shas3 6y ago
  The incompetence of CDC and FDA is staggering. It is not hard to imagine an alternative reality where the CDC-FDA testing fiasco did not occur, there was some test-and-trace early in the epidemic, and the cost and extent of the shut-downs were lesser and far fewer deaths occurred. It is a bit dismaying to say this: but CDC and FDA have a lot of blood on their hands.
  - 6y ago
inappropriated 6y ago
Capitalism strikes again. Also, having assholes like Trump in power doesn't help either. A country full of guns and no-one's shot the cunt yet? It's bizarre.
notyourday 6y ago
That's easy. Hospital administrators were more interested in selling Tylenol pills available $5.00 retail for $500.00.
bronlund 6y ago
Because you are idiots?
fctorial 6y ago
Do they even work?
Balgair 6y ago
"The news agency found that not a single shipment of medical-grade N95 masks arrived at U.S. ports during the month of March... Federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders for the urgently needed supplies... The first large U.S. government order ... was not placed until March 21st—the same day that Ries got his first phone call about the Kushner effort. The order... did not even require the supplies to be delivered until the end of April" (emphasis mine, edited for length) Though the article goes into more detail to the question that the title asks, I thought this part was pertinent. How did we end up with nurses in garbage PPE? The same way they still are in them. The problems that existed a month ago still exist today and are likely to continue to exist.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
There would have been more substantial stockpiles of all essentials and safety equipment if price 'gouging' wasn't illegal. When you restrict prices to below a arbitrary level of any good, you get shortages during those periods when the price should be above that level.

221 points by dankohn1 6y ago

There's a terrific debate to be had about the role of the federal government in a national emergency. Is it the air support for state led initiatives, or should it be more of a quarterback coordinating action across all state lines?

mehrdadn 6y ago
No, there's zero debate to be had. They actively intercept and confiscate medical supplies that states purchase to save their populations from dying. Blue states, I might add. Which is of course a complete coincidence. (And other countries haven't been immune to this either, but that's another story.)
- sooheon 6y ago
  A: "there's a good debate to be had about the role of justice system, should it seek to rehabilitate or punish?" B: "no, there's zero debate to be had because this one judge was caught taking bribes" One is a question about purpose and design, the other is a bug in the implementation.
- makomk 6y ago
  See, this is why it's lose-lose for the federal government. If they allow states to bid against each other for the same equipment, enriching shady middlemen and stockpilers, this is proof they've failed (see comment elsewhere in thread) - but if they seize those stockpiles and don't allow them to be sold at a massive markup to the highest bidder, they're actively intercepting medical supplies that states purchase to save their populations from dying. The American press has been loudly pushing both of these narratives at once.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgift 6y ago
    Probably because the president (still the leader of said government) telling the press that his people shouldn't talk to governors which haven't been nice enough to him doesn't inspire confidence that the second part is done in the best interest of all states. Now, if the federal government would show that they don't just do it for selfish purposes that narrative would die down pretty fast.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    The lack of coordination and mixed messages have been a problem. Trump has publicly said governors should be fending for themselves, and has also been "punishing" states with governors he doesn't like by not taking their calls. States have no reason to trust the federal government to properly help them, and the federal government has shown no capacity or willingness to do anything but release funds.
Fezzik 6y ago
I would think when the type of need is uniform across all states (testing, supplies, containment rules, support for workers and businesses, etc...) and the only difference in each state is in the volume of the need, the Federal Government would take charge. It has more funds and the ability to mandate uniform rules. It also has access to people who are paid to be the smartest folks in the room in dealing with pandemics. This is what the CDC was designed for. Having 50 different states try to piece together a response to an international problem seems destined to... lead us exactly where we are - a day late and a dollar short. Avoiding this was predicated on not having a complete imbecile at the helm though. It really mucks everything up.
- anticensor 6y ago
  Department of State should step in to restore fearless travel conditions as the pandemic is a situation preventing people actually practice statutorily guaranteed freedom to travel. EDIT: I looked up; the Department of Health or the Department of State would be more fit for purpose. Not the Department of Homeland Security, because TSA is actually a Travel Security Agency despite it is named Travel Safety Agency.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    > Department of Interior should step in to restore fearless travel conditions as the pandemic is a situation preventing people actually practice statutorily guaranteed freedom to travel. In spirit I don’t disagree but how can the Department of the Interior do this? What is the specific action? Also why would The Department of the Interior be responsible for travel conditions rather than something like The Department of Transportation? E: I still don’t follow, what action can be taken by any agency to make travel fearless in time of pandemic? Department of State carries out U.S. foreign policy. What can they do to change the reality of a pandemic?
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - anticensor 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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djaque 6y ago
No, there might be a nice debate later, but this crisis isn't an exercise in theory. There are people dying right now because of an administration that downplayed the crisis, failed to react, and is now actively sabotaging our state level response unless officials perform personal favours to the president.
- austhrow743 6y ago
  None of that changes our ability to have that debate now. You're allowed to discuss current events on the internet. No one will get you for it.
- tastygreenapple 6y ago
  People are dying because of China, not America.
eli 6y ago
A pandemic that affects all states and all countries in the world and requires almost unprecedented collective action to solve? How can forcing states to figure it out themselves possibly be beneficial? Why is the Governor of NY negotiating directly with Chinese suppliers? Why are states bidding against each for the same scarce equipment, enriching only the middlemen who have suddenly and suspiciously inserted themselves in the process?
- sooheon 6y ago
  Great points in favor of a good QB. Fat middlement don't disappear with centralization though -- see: defense contractor fraud [1] [1]: https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/05/defense-contracting-fraud/ https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/05/defense-contracting-fr...
- toasterlovin 6y ago
  FWIW, states like New York and California have larger populations and economies than most European countries. That, I think, is an argument in favor of being more hands off and letting the governors figure out what’s right in their state. They’ll have a much better understanding of what their local problems and capabilities are.
  - eli 6y ago
    No I don’t think it is. Their local problems are the exact same virus as everyone else’s local problems.
    - surge 6y ago
      No its not, for instance just population density is a huge factor in the spread of a virus. If you live in an area where people are fairly isolated or travel outside their region very little, than you don't need to do the same extreme lockdowns or shut down the economy to the same degree to prevent the spread. I live in a state that's barely being touched by this, and not because we don't have it, but because there are two large cities that have maybe 100+ cases or significant hospital load, and the spread is insignificant because its very easy for people to avoid each other and take basic precautions during interaction to prevent the spread. If you live in apartment buildings, 6 feet from your neighbor with only a wall to separate you stacked stories high with shared elevators, stairwells, hallways, and the majority of transport requires people to be in close proximity on sidewalks, buses, or trains, the factors and extreme measures needed to stop its spread are very different than someone living in Alaska or Idaho. Those people don't need to stay in their homes, they just need to avoid going anywhere unnecessary with large groups of people and wash their hands and cover their mouths. Some states have higher rates of obesity or other risk factors, some states have higher populations of elderly than others. One size fits all measures doesn't work, you need focused precision efforts determined by locals and the only thing they need from the umbrella governments is support in their efforts for needs they've determined are necessary.
trhway 6y ago
doesn't pandemic infection fall under interstate commerce, and thus is pure federal domain?
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  No. The Courts have ruled in the past that for public safety, states can restrict travel.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
joe_the_user 6y ago
Maybe there's a debate to be had about how the Federal Government should act but there shouldn't be a debate whether it should act and the article gives a good description of the Federal Government simply failing to act and even sabotaging action. The unconscionable and rather unbelievable.
lmeyerov 6y ago
There's a difference between having a terrific debate and changing the national stockpile website mid-pandemic to say "nah"
shirro 6y ago
Other federal systems face the same dilemmas. In Australia the powers of the states and federal government are set by the constitution. The feds don't have jurisdiction in many areas. It has to be a team effort. So they have whole of government meetings to work out a common, co-ordinated approach. We see a common message and have federal government support for the states but each state is free to implement measures appropriate to their local situation. I think this consensus driven approach is the only way it can work. The federal government implementing border security, helping with international trade, mobilising military, providing funding. States legislating isolation, enforcing law and order, organising hospitals and testing. Australia has a much smaller population, fewer states and less political extremes. It would be easy to dismiss our relatively good performance in this crisis as due to our isolation and geography. But I think our political system has worked well for us. Even though I don't like some of our political leadership and don't consider them very effective normally, even their worst efforts are looking good compared to what I see elsewhere in the world. I think in a crisis like this if you rely too strongly on a quarterback to take control you can get into a lot of trouble if your quarterback turns out to be useless or even detrimental. The elected king model is too risky. An executive controlled by the legislature is far more responsible and effective.

GeekyBear 6y ago

Just in time manufacturing is a recipe for disaster when you allow a single nation to do the lion's share of everyone's manufacturing, and that nation is the first to shut down. A decentralized manufacturing system with distribution through regional warehouses was more resilient, if less cost effective. Some states, California and New York among them, did create their own local stockpiles of ventilators and PPE after the bird and swine flu scares, but did away with them in the fiscal crunch after the financial meltdown. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-once-had-mobile-hospitals-and-a-ventilator-stockpile-but-it-dismantled-them/ar-BB11O8Gs https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-once-had-mobile... https://www.propublica.org/article/how-new-york-city-emergency-ventilator-stockpile-ended-up-on-the-auction-block https://www.propublica.org/article/how-new-york-city-emergen...

ReptileMan 6y ago
On the other hand the land in US in non coastal or agricultural places is very cheap. You can have whole factories build for critical supplies and just conserve them. When the crisis and unemployment hits - just put people there to work. This spare capacity can be maintained on the cheap.
- adrianN 6y ago
  The last time we had a pandemic like this was 100 years ago. Do you honestly believe we'd maintain unused factories for that long and then start manufacturing modern medical equipment with century old technology?
  - twomoretime 6y ago
    There are other reasons to maintain domestic emergency capacity. We're still a bunch of apes living on a hostile rock. Except we also have war machines.
  - ReptileMan 6y ago
    No. We will update them from time to time. And of course we had three close calls in the latest 20 years - sars, mers and ebola. And btw - this is literally what 3M did with the N95 masks - they had spare production lines that turned on in a heartbeat https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-25/3m-doubled-production-of-n95-face-masks-to-fight-coronavirus https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-25/3m-double... This is 3M’s moment, one for which the staid, 118-year-old Minnesota manufacturing giant—the maker of Post-its, Scotch tape, touchscreen displays, and scores of other products—has been preparing for almost two decades. Coming out of the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, the company realized it wasn’t fully equipped to handle unexpected explosions of demand in the event of a crisis, or what it calls an “X factor.” It decided to build surge capacity into its respirator factories around the world. And with terrorist groups and state actors realizing that animal viruses are potent biological weapons, and legitimate research centers working on making viruses airborne - chances of another screeching halt in the next 10 years due to malice or incompetence are not that low.

matttproud 6y ago

The United States: your global leader in self-afflicted wounds.

kelnos 6y ago
You know what they say about us: the US will always do the right thing, after trying everything else first.
krapp 6y ago
Let's burn down the government so this never happens again!
- wonderwonder 6y ago
  We probably shouldn't burn it down but may be a good time for some strict anti nepotism laws. The presidents son in law should not be leading secret councils and managing the virus response. The presidents daughter should not be on the economic recovery council. This government has the worst people doing the most important jobs.
  - krapp 6y ago
    It's ironic that Trump was elected, among other reasons, because people believed he was honest due to not being or acting like a professional politician, and incorruptible due to being wealthy enough to be self-funded. And yet he's turned out to be the least honest, most corruptible president since maybe Nixon. If only there was a decades-long trail of publicly available sources that could have shed some light on his personality and dishonest character... ah well. At least his administration didn't use a private email server with flagrant disregard for security procedures, or get mixed up in a botched military raid that led to multiple civilian deaths. Oh wait... At least he's not a New York elite. Wait, no... At least he isn't a baby-eating pedophile cult leader and mass murderer. Or a Clinton. That's better.
    - wonderwonder 6y ago

de_watcher 6y ago

If it looks stupid but it works, it ain't stupid.

smcl 6y ago
I think the point is that it is a desperate measure that kinda-sorta works, but needn't have been necessary in the first place
richbradshaw 6y ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/kious-kelly-hospital-nurse-dies-trash-bags-2020-3?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/kious-kelly-hospital-nurse-d... https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-uk-nurses-forced-to-wear-bin-bags-test-positive-2020-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-uk-nurses-forced... so, doesn't really work no, but is a desperate measure which is at best better than nothing.
anoraca 6y ago
That used to resonate with me. And then I thought about how just because something worked once, that doesn't mean it isn't extremely risky and likely to fail on future attempts.
fzeroracer 6y ago
If the code runs once and works, then it works. Until it doesn't work and it takes down all of production.

TomMckenny 6y ago

There is a difficult follow up to this. When the dust settles months from now and some 40% of the country becomes convinced none of these problems ever happened, how shall we prevent this or other fiascos next time?

z9e 6y ago
There's already movements being made in Japan and other countries to move manufacturing out of China, I'm hopeful policies will come out of this that get rid of the just-in-time supply chain for critical things like PPE for Dr's.
akiselev 6y ago
That 40% will jump on any excuse to pump up anti-Sino sentiment, regardless of whether they believe in the excuse or not. This might be a politically solvable problem regardless of which side holds power come January.

seh4 6y ago

>https://www.smh.com.au/national/billions-of-face-masks-sent-to-china-during-australian-bushfire-crisis-20200402-p54gjh.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/billions-of-face-masks-sent-... >More than two billion face masks sourced from countries around the world including Australia were sent to China at the height of the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan, according to official figures released by the Chinese customs service. >Employees of Chinese state-owned companies were directed to purchase whatever they could find in the way of masks and protective clothing to send back home in a massive humanitarian effort.

seh4 6y ago
>https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeDepot/comments/etth22/asians_buying_all_our_3m_dust_masks_coronavirus/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeDepot/comments/etth22/asians_bu... >My store is located in SoCal near a very young, Asian area. With the coronavirus news starting to catch more concern, the Asian population here is buying boxes and pallets of a specific 3M mask. >This is store 1072 East Brea. They also bought up all of our thermometers, as well as other medical supplies. It's looking more and more like the CCP wanted this to become a global pandemic.
- dfcowell 6y ago
  Or a whole bunch of scared people were trying to do something to help their family back home. I'm an expat, living abroad, with a large group of expat friends. Everyone is doing the same thing - thinking about what resources we have access to relative to our families and friends back home, and wondering what we can send them and they can send us.
  - seh4 6y ago
    >Or a whole bunch of scared people were trying to do something to help their family back home. These people bought pallet-loads of masks, gloves, thermometers, and other supplies: >https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/euijsd/man_at_a_local_home_depot_clearing_out_all_n95/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/euijsd/man_at_a_... This wasn't people buying supplies for their family and friends back home. At best, it was profiteering (hoping to resell at a steep markup), and at worst, it was an organized effort by the CCP to weaken other countries, including the US.

101404 6y ago

"Interdependence" was a nice theory, but it seems to have it's limitations.

stock_toaster 6y ago

Kakistocracy at its finest, that's how.

sherr 6y ago

There's a tremendous amount of bureaucratic infighting and cluelessness in many countries just now (I'm in the UK). There have been debates for many years about streamlining the chain of command and responsibility in the USA; just think about the post-9/11 debates. I understand that the federal structure makes some things hard but it would seem to me that a proper central authority to manage a crisis like this would be very useful - but isn't this what FEMA is for? After the dust settles, some heads need to be bashed together.

netsharc 6y ago
I agree with the head bashing, sadly that probably won't happen. The incompetent will slap each others' backs saying "heckuva job!" and go home to their gold toilets..
specialist 6y ago
"There have been debates for many years about streamlining the chain of command and responsibility in the USA..." My takeaway from the 9/11 debacle is we learned that the Clinton Admin had a "shaking the tree" process. In response WTC bombing, USS Cole, embassy attacks, etc. There are always organizational problems. Reasons data isn't shared. Legal, turf, bureaucratic, inability to correlate with others, whatever. Their workaround was to have a daily standup where all the agency heads shared info. Bush Admin (eg Condi Rice) discontinued such nonsense, choosing to focus on Russia (ending bans on nuke testing, chemical weapons, missile defense). Trump Admin didn't choose to discontinue Obama Admin's preparedness so much as outright rejected anything and everything Obama related, and pandemic stuff was swept away with the rest.
shas3 6y ago
The incompetence of CDC and FDA is staggering. It is not hard to imagine an alternative reality where the CDC-FDA testing fiasco did not occur, there was some test-and-trace early in the epidemic, and the cost and extent of the shut-downs were lesser and far fewer deaths occurred. It is a bit dismaying to say this: but CDC and FDA have a lot of blood on their hands.
- 6y ago

inappropriated 6y ago

Capitalism strikes again. Also, having assholes like Trump in power doesn't help either. A country full of guns and no-one's shot the cunt yet? It's bizarre.

notyourday 6y ago

That's easy. Hospital administrators were more interested in selling Tylenol pills available $5.00 retail for $500.00.

bronlund 6y ago

Because you are idiots?

fctorial 6y ago

Do they even work?

Balgair 6y ago

"The news agency found that not a single shipment of medical-grade N95 masks arrived at U.S. ports during the month of March... Federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders for the urgently needed supplies... The first large U.S. government order ... was not placed until March 21st—the same day that Ries got his first phone call about the Kushner effort. The order... did not even require the supplies to be delivered until the end of April" (emphasis mine, edited for length) Though the article goes into more detail to the question that the title asks, I thought this part was pertinent. How did we end up with nurses in garbage PPE? The same way they still are in them. The problems that existed a month ago still exist today and are likely to continue to exist.

CryptoPunk 6y ago

There would have been more substantial stockpiles of all essentials and safety equipment if price 'gouging' wasn't illegal. When you restrict prices to below a arbitrary level of any good, you get shortages during those periods when the price should be above that level.