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Capacity is ramping up. It's surprising that the reporter (Joel Rose) didn't mention a new large Dräger plant in Pennsylvania that has begun manufacturing comp

Capacity is ramping up. It's surprising that the reporter (Joel Rose) didn't mention a new large Dräger plant in Pennsylvania that has begun manufacturing completely made-in-USA N-95 NIOSH-compliant masks. 3M and Honeywell are responding to HHS and DoD contracts by double or tripling their monthly output (admittedly, most of their factories are outside the U.S., in China and other places). According to Statistica, monthly production of these masks will rise from 45 million units in January 2020 to 180 million units by end of year. Maybe this is insufficient but it's certainly better than nothing. One issue is the difficulty and expense of producing meltblown textile, the material that traps microscopic particles so effectively. Currently this material is in shortage, and manufacturers are reluctant to build expensive machinery to make it when the demand may not exist a year from now. One could make a case that the government should guarantee such companies from loss, to encourage short term investment. 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1135072/us-n95-mask-production/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1135072/us-n95-mask-prod... 2. https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-09-10/scarcity-of-key-material-squeezes-medical-mask-manufacturing https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-09-10/sca... 3. https://news.yahoo.com/dr-ger-increases-n95-respiratory-155500945.html https://news.yahoo.com/dr-ger-increases-n95-respiratory-1555...

snarf21 6y ago
The government should have stepped in. We probably don't even need more N95. We could have a different kind of mask that is highly effective and made for comfort with kids and adult sizes. The government could have ordered and distributed these at cost. Then a national mask mandate is trivial. We could have greatly cut the spread and job losses. Instead they did basically nothing and said it would go away in a week or two.
- bluGill 6y ago
  We is any governments. There is a worldwide shortage, not US shortage.
- donor20 6y ago
  This actually happened in Korea - the KF94 masks have great surface area, seal, comfort etc. Good surface area = good airflow as well.
- howmayiannoyyou 6y ago
  Try doing research before you reflex-post. https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/SNS/Pages/procurement.aspx https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/SNS/Pages/procu... Aside from the 2 Trillion or so the USGOV has provided the country in stimulus, BARDA and others have expended billions in COVID countermeasures including PPE and 600 million masks under or (or to be) manufacture(d). They await Congressional appropriations before they can expend even more. https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/Pages/default.aspx https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/Pages/default.a... POTUS power to allocate money comes from CONGRESS, so when you say 'Government' you're saying almost nothing.
  - dashundchen 6y ago
    There is plenty more that could have been done by both Congress and the executive. However the national response from the president and the executive branch has been an abject failure on almost every front from day 1 - including testing, data collection, supply coordination and proven public health policy like mask mandates. The Defense Production Act could have been used to marshall supplies, which were known to face shortages, in January. Instead the virus was downplayed and the act wasn't invoked until late March. Money for supplies went to ineffective and politically connected middlemen like Blue Flame Medical, who could not actually deliver supplies. The president refused to wear a mask in public until July and continues to muddy the water about their effectiveness, stoking anti-mask sentiment (admittedly only relevant to his base). Instead ineffective treatments like hydroxychloroquine were hawked and endlessly pushed into a nonsense debate for months. A national testing strategy implemented by executive branch agenencies, such as CDC and HSH could have had a huge impact on the spread. Instead there was no guidance or coordination of testing supplies, states are still competing with each other to purchase testing supplies. We found out this week that HHS has tampered scientific reports and COVID data with political motivations! Funds for supplies have hardly been the only problem here.
  - jerry1979 6y ago
    In context, I imagine that when the parent poster says "government" they know the reader can substitute "government" with "the legislative and executive branches of government".
- murgindrag 6y ago
  Korea has a nice new mask. AirQueen. Reusable. Reasonably comfortable. N95-equivalent for filtration. The seal isn't quite as good as a proper N95, but it beat surgical, and even surgical gets you almost all the way there.
  - TinyRick 6y ago
    I ordered some of these and was very impressed with the quality.
  - light_hue_1 6y ago
    Be careful with AirQueen masks. They are of dubious quality. The [CDC tested them](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/results/MTT-2020-173.5_International_Toptec_AirQueenNanoMask_TestReport_Redacted-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/results/...) and their quality control leaves a lot to be desired. If the variance for just 10 masks was so incredibly high, who knows how crappy the 99th percentile mask they produce is?
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Proper fit (read: the seal) is necessary for an N95 mask to do its job. So much so that 3M put out a bulletin for US customers cautioning them that fit testing is required when using KN95 masks, even if you are already fit-tested for their N95s, because the KN95 masks are designed for a flatter Asian-featured face.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  N95 would have been good if ready on day one, to avoid lockdowns after that any mask would help with appropriate behavior, which requires nothing but political quality
- makomk 6y ago
  The US government did step in - really early on, soon after Covid-19's existence became known, they guaranteed that they'd buy up the production of N95 masks if no-one else did in order to encourage companies to risk producing more of them even though Covid might not turn out to be a big deal. Generally, the only acknowledgement you see of this in the media is in the form of complaints that they didn't guarantee to buy up production for even longer. The fundamental trouble is that effective masks like N95 require special melt-blown plastic in order to filter out particles whilst still allowing people to breathe through them, there's limited production capacity, and the equipment to make it has long lead times and limited production capacity itself. There's no clever way around this. For example, invoking the Defense Production Act wouldn't help despite how hard the media pushed this idea because the companies literally couldn't make any more masks, so ordering them to do so would be completely and utterly pointless. And it's not like there are other materials that work as well either. The reason why "The market is, in fact, glutted with face shields. But the U.S. is still far short of the 3.5 billion masks that public health officials say are needed this year." is not because of a lack of central co-ordination, it's because pretty much any old manufacturer can produce face shields (people were even making them at home on small scales with 3D printers for a while) but N95 masks are really specialized things.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > For example, invoking the Defense Production Act wouldn't help despite how hard the media pushed this idea because the companies literally couldn't make any more masks, so ordering them to do so would be completely and utterly pointless. That's not entirely true. The DPA would've allowed them to direct the existing production to where it was needed most. Instead, individual states wound up competing against each other on the open market, driving prices up and directing quite a bit of supply to places where it wasn't needed yet. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-04-07/states-compete-in-global-jungle-for-personal-protective-equipment-amid-coronavirus https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-04-07/...
    - makomk 6y ago
      The US government did direct where the existing production went. Remember all the stories claiming that they were starving blue states of PPE for political reasons every time those states got less than they ordered? Similarly, they cracked down quite heavily on people hoarding and reselling N95 masks, which created another wave of headlines about how terrible it was that the states which were trying to buy those face masks at inflated prices didn't get their orders.
gambler 6y ago
> when the demand may not exist a year from now. With extra fires, newly emerging awareness of how viruses actually work, and with understanding that we need stockpiles (and not just on federal level) the demand should hold pretty well. At least I hope so, because collapsing demand would mean people didn't learn anything.
- sprafa 6y ago
  You seem to misunderstand human instinct - we’ll do exactly what you’re saying won’t happen.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  State & federal gov'ts should stockpile masks against the next emergency. This would guarantee a pretty good demand for product for a while.
clairity 6y ago
masks (and lockdowns) are safety theater, for the benefit of seeming like good, caring citizens because of the high visibility of wearing a mask, when the hard work of preventing spread comes down to distancing properly even when that’s socially awkward, like at a gathering which is where mask usage also dives, because it’s private and the humans involved are overly trusting and complicit. masks are a distraction at best, helping only at the margins when worn vigorously where distancing is not possible. we don’t need to solve a mask shortage problem, but rather the social distancing problem that masks are only marginally helpful for. npr loves talking incessantly about masks, both as virtue signal and click getter, even in stories where its utterly, entirely irrelevant.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  You're right there's some deep tribal instinct. And masks scratch that itch big time. Strap the tribe sign right to your face!
- nucleardog 6y ago
  > masks are a distraction at best Wat. This study[1] from China reports on infections at one hospital in Wuhan in January. Of 493 medical staff, 278 were in the "quarantine" area. This included the respiratory department that would have had very intimate contact with the infected. There were zero cases of SARS-Cov-2 among the staff. Of the 213 staff from other departments that were _not_ in close, continuous contact with the infected (but also not taking infection control measures), there were 10 cases in a less than three week span. Masks are in no way "marginally" helpful. If worn properly and used alongside other basic measures such as hand washing, they are extremely effective even in absence of social distancing measures. This meta-study[2] compiles information on effectiveness from a dozen different studies across healthcare and non-healthcare groups. Effectiveness varies, but almost every single study shows decreased transmission with masks. Taken at aggregate among those that weren't healthcare workers, your risk of infection is halved by wearing a mask. The CDC has repeatedly claimed that if everyone wore a mask the outbreak in the US would be under control in one to two months. Simply social distancing does not remove the risk of infection as we've seen time and time again. The droplets don't hit some magical barrier as soon as they're 2 metres away from the source. Masks are not virtue signalling or safety theater. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7134426/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7134426/ [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253999/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253999/

snarf21 6y ago

The government should have stepped in. We probably don't even need more N95. We could have a different kind of mask that is highly effective and made for comfort with kids and adult sizes. The government could have ordered and distributed these at cost. Then a national mask mandate is trivial. We could have greatly cut the spread and job losses. Instead they did basically nothing and said it would go away in a week or two.

bluGill 6y ago
We is any governments. There is a worldwide shortage, not US shortage.
donor20 6y ago
This actually happened in Korea - the KF94 masks have great surface area, seal, comfort etc. Good surface area = good airflow as well.
howmayiannoyyou 6y ago
Try doing research before you reflex-post. https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/SNS/Pages/procurement.aspx https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/SNS/Pages/procu... Aside from the 2 Trillion or so the USGOV has provided the country in stimulus, BARDA and others have expended billions in COVID countermeasures including PPE and 600 million masks under or (or to be) manufacture(d). They await Congressional appropriations before they can expend even more. https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/Pages/default.aspx https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/Pages/default.a... POTUS power to allocate money comes from CONGRESS, so when you say 'Government' you're saying almost nothing.
- dashundchen 6y ago
  There is plenty more that could have been done by both Congress and the executive. However the national response from the president and the executive branch has been an abject failure on almost every front from day 1 - including testing, data collection, supply coordination and proven public health policy like mask mandates. The Defense Production Act could have been used to marshall supplies, which were known to face shortages, in January. Instead the virus was downplayed and the act wasn't invoked until late March. Money for supplies went to ineffective and politically connected middlemen like Blue Flame Medical, who could not actually deliver supplies. The president refused to wear a mask in public until July and continues to muddy the water about their effectiveness, stoking anti-mask sentiment (admittedly only relevant to his base). Instead ineffective treatments like hydroxychloroquine were hawked and endlessly pushed into a nonsense debate for months. A national testing strategy implemented by executive branch agenencies, such as CDC and HSH could have had a huge impact on the spread. Instead there was no guidance or coordination of testing supplies, states are still competing with each other to purchase testing supplies. We found out this week that HHS has tampered scientific reports and COVID data with political motivations! Funds for supplies have hardly been the only problem here.
- jerry1979 6y ago
  In context, I imagine that when the parent poster says "government" they know the reader can substitute "government" with "the legislative and executive branches of government".
murgindrag 6y ago
Korea has a nice new mask. AirQueen. Reusable. Reasonably comfortable. N95-equivalent for filtration. The seal isn't quite as good as a proper N95, but it beat surgical, and even surgical gets you almost all the way there.
- TinyRick 6y ago
  I ordered some of these and was very impressed with the quality.
- light_hue_1 6y ago
  Be careful with AirQueen masks. They are of dubious quality. The [CDC tested them](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/results/MTT-2020-173.5_International_Toptec_AirQueenNanoMask_TestReport_Redacted-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/results/...) and their quality control leaves a lot to be desired. If the variance for just 10 masks was so incredibly high, who knows how crappy the 99th percentile mask they produce is?
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Proper fit (read: the seal) is necessary for an N95 mask to do its job. So much so that 3M put out a bulletin for US customers cautioning them that fit testing is required when using KN95 masks, even if you are already fit-tested for their N95s, because the KN95 masks are designed for a flatter Asian-featured face.
agumonkey 6y ago
N95 would have been good if ready on day one, to avoid lockdowns after that any mask would help with appropriate behavior, which requires nothing but political quality
makomk 6y ago
The US government did step in - really early on, soon after Covid-19's existence became known, they guaranteed that they'd buy up the production of N95 masks if no-one else did in order to encourage companies to risk producing more of them even though Covid might not turn out to be a big deal. Generally, the only acknowledgement you see of this in the media is in the form of complaints that they didn't guarantee to buy up production for even longer. The fundamental trouble is that effective masks like N95 require special melt-blown plastic in order to filter out particles whilst still allowing people to breathe through them, there's limited production capacity, and the equipment to make it has long lead times and limited production capacity itself. There's no clever way around this. For example, invoking the Defense Production Act wouldn't help despite how hard the media pushed this idea because the companies literally couldn't make any more masks, so ordering them to do so would be completely and utterly pointless. And it's not like there are other materials that work as well either. The reason why "The market is, in fact, glutted with face shields. But the U.S. is still far short of the 3.5 billion masks that public health officials say are needed this year." is not because of a lack of central co-ordination, it's because pretty much any old manufacturer can produce face shields (people were even making them at home on small scales with 3D printers for a while) but N95 masks are really specialized things.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > For example, invoking the Defense Production Act wouldn't help despite how hard the media pushed this idea because the companies literally couldn't make any more masks, so ordering them to do so would be completely and utterly pointless. That's not entirely true. The DPA would've allowed them to direct the existing production to where it was needed most. Instead, individual states wound up competing against each other on the open market, driving prices up and directing quite a bit of supply to places where it wasn't needed yet. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-04-07/states-compete-in-global-jungle-for-personal-protective-equipment-amid-coronavirus https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-04-07/...
  - makomk 6y ago
    The US government did direct where the existing production went. Remember all the stories claiming that they were starving blue states of PPE for political reasons every time those states got less than they ordered? Similarly, they cracked down quite heavily on people hoarding and reselling N95 masks, which created another wave of headlines about how terrible it was that the states which were trying to buy those face masks at inflated prices didn't get their orders.

gambler 6y ago

> when the demand may not exist a year from now. With extra fires, newly emerging awareness of how viruses actually work, and with understanding that we need stockpiles (and not just on federal level) the demand should hold pretty well. At least I hope so, because collapsing demand would mean people didn't learn anything.

sprafa 6y ago
You seem to misunderstand human instinct - we’ll do exactly what you’re saying won’t happen.
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
State & federal gov'ts should stockpile masks against the next emergency. This would guarantee a pretty good demand for product for a while.

clairity 6y ago

masks (and lockdowns) are safety theater, for the benefit of seeming like good, caring citizens because of the high visibility of wearing a mask, when the hard work of preventing spread comes down to distancing properly even when that’s socially awkward, like at a gathering which is where mask usage also dives, because it’s private and the humans involved are overly trusting and complicit. masks are a distraction at best, helping only at the margins when worn vigorously where distancing is not possible. we don’t need to solve a mask shortage problem, but rather the social distancing problem that masks are only marginally helpful for. npr loves talking incessantly about masks, both as virtue signal and click getter, even in stories where its utterly, entirely irrelevant.

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
You're right there's some deep tribal instinct. And masks scratch that itch big time. Strap the tribe sign right to your face!
nucleardog 6y ago
> masks are a distraction at best Wat. This study[1] from China reports on infections at one hospital in Wuhan in January. Of 493 medical staff, 278 were in the "quarantine" area. This included the respiratory department that would have had very intimate contact with the infected. There were zero cases of SARS-Cov-2 among the staff. Of the 213 staff from other departments that were _not_ in close, continuous contact with the infected (but also not taking infection control measures), there were 10 cases in a less than three week span. Masks are in no way "marginally" helpful. If worn properly and used alongside other basic measures such as hand washing, they are extremely effective even in absence of social distancing measures. This meta-study[2] compiles information on effectiveness from a dozen different studies across healthcare and non-healthcare groups. Effectiveness varies, but almost every single study shows decreased transmission with masks. Taken at aggregate among those that weren't healthcare workers, your risk of infection is halved by wearing a mask. The CDC has repeatedly claimed that if everyone wore a mask the outbreak in the US would be under control in one to two months. Simply social distancing does not remove the risk of infection as we've seen time and time again. The droplets don't hit some magical barrier as soon as they're 2 metres away from the source. Masks are not virtue signalling or safety theater. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7134426/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7134426/ [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253999/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253999/