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Understood for the production of ventilators. But it's impossible to ignore the other ways we could have prepared: namely redistribution / production of PPE for

Understood for the production of ventilators. But it's impossible to ignore the other ways we could have prepared: namely redistribution / production of PPE for doctors, and quite simply sheltering in place much much earlier.

adventured 7y ago
No question there was an epic failure of preparation on normal PPE gear. The US Government should have had a stockpile of N95 masks, as one example, numbering in the multiple hundreds of millions. For something like this, the US really needed a stockpile of a billion plus masks (even if you have massive domestic production capabilities, you obviously can't always rely on that when a pandemic hits). The big failure was preparation rather than reaction with urgency to produce (that part is exceptionally difficult to do in such a short amount of time, it's setting yourself up for failure, as we've seen in most industrial nations). Throw into the mix the fact that the world's biggest manufacturer of PPE gear was the center of the pandemic. Meaning they needed all of their own supply and would not be able to export properly so the rest of the world could build up their own supplies. So you're on your own to make your gear (something many nations around the world have had to suffer miserably through; most nations are screwed in this situation, they simply can't make such gear quickly under any scenario). This rapidly broke global supply chains, something never before experienced during the post 1970 high globalization era where supply chains became very complex, more fragile and global. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have had more ventilators in stock - we should have. An extra tens of thousands of ventilators in our stockpile would not have been unreasonable. That's another preparation failure spanning decades into the past.
- cameldrv 7y ago
  A lot of PPE left the country in January and that could have been prevented. A lot more screening and testing of travelers and symptomatic patients could have been done in February, and we might have been able to contain it in a similar manner to South Korea.
  - eru 7y ago
    > A lot of PPE left the country in January and that could have been prevented. For example by legalising 'hoarding' and 'profiteering'. Then some enterprising speculators could have bid for the PPE in the hopes of selling them for higher prices later.

adventured 7y ago

No question there was an epic failure of preparation on normal PPE gear. The US Government should have had a stockpile of N95 masks, as one example, numbering in the multiple hundreds of millions. For something like this, the US really needed a stockpile of a billion plus masks (even if you have massive domestic production capabilities, you obviously can't always rely on that when a pandemic hits). The big failure was preparation rather than reaction with urgency to produce (that part is exceptionally difficult to do in such a short amount of time, it's setting yourself up for failure, as we've seen in most industrial nations). Throw into the mix the fact that the world's biggest manufacturer of PPE gear was the center of the pandemic. Meaning they needed all of their own supply and would not be able to export properly so the rest of the world could build up their own supplies. So you're on your own to make your gear (something many nations around the world have had to suffer miserably through; most nations are screwed in this situation, they simply can't make such gear quickly under any scenario). This rapidly broke global supply chains, something never before experienced during the post 1970 high globalization era where supply chains became very complex, more fragile and global. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have had more ventilators in stock - we should have. An extra tens of thousands of ventilators in our stockpile would not have been unreasonable. That's another preparation failure spanning decades into the past.

cameldrv 7y ago
A lot of PPE left the country in January and that could have been prevented. A lot more screening and testing of travelers and symptomatic patients could have been done in February, and we might have been able to contain it in a similar manner to South Korea.
- eru 7y ago
  > A lot of PPE left the country in January and that could have been prevented. For example by legalising 'hoarding' and 'profiteering'. Then some enterprising speculators could have bid for the PPE in the hopes of selling them for higher prices later.