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It's literally harder to produce N95 masks then to churn out rifles and ammo. Want to produce a rifle (in the 1940s)? Milling machines and operators. That's a

It's literally harder to produce N95 masks then to churn out rifles and ammo. Want to produce a rifle (in the 1940s)? Milling machines and operators. That's a factory order, done. Ammo? Couple four stage presses and some armorers, not even hard to train civilians instead. Want to produce N95 masks? Ok, well there's a custom built machine that produces the correct kind of fabric, there are only two builders in the world, and the machine has a meaningfully high failure rate... and requires special shipping, assembly, maintenance and so on...

ashtonkem 6y ago
You’re right, we’ve never produced cutting edge machinery en masse for a war before, this situation is completely new... Wait, that’s not right. That’s also ignoring scale. Getting a few machinists for rifles is pretty easy; getting all the machinists for total war is not. Comparative to the scale of government action and organization in WW2, manufacturing and distributing PPE is nothing.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  A lot of people know how to build or operate a mill well enough to do most tasks. My dad does, my grandfather did, most of my uncles do. The particular fabric machine for N95 masks is very specialized, and building those machines has a failure rate - you may be producing fabric only sufficient for a N90 or N85 application - a lot of "dust" or "atv" masks are exactly that. The machines are physically large enough and with specialized enough parts you can't build one out of a machine shop. It'd be like demanding we mass produce Titan IVs tomorrow. America has built a Titan IV before, we've built a few - surely we could just crank out one a day right?
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I’m not saying that making the basic machinery for PPE is easy compared to say, simple firearms. They’re obviously more complex. But they’re also a known problem; we’ve been making PPE out of the same basic materials since 1972. Compared to other large scale efforts the US has undergone to fight wars or handle other national pride situations, making more PPE machines is both cheaper and simpler. It does not require the creation of new technologies, nor the whole sale mobilization and re-organization of our society. All it requires is the application of enough money to buy an F-35 or two to rebuild the machines that were dismantled back in 2000. This is not complicated, we just lack the will as a society to fix this.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      What is your hypothesis on why the UK, France, Germany, Norway, etc. have not just dictated new capacity into existence? If they could do that, then even if the US was uniquely sucking wind, we could just buy from them. We can't.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        No idea. I don’t know enough about those countries to have a meaningful opinion.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Of course there are difficulties. Everything is difficult compared to just buying stuff from China. The entire point is that we used to tackle the difficulties and work hard to succeed, rather than simply give up and recite reasons why things cannot be done.
pjc50 6y ago
Machinery, and machine-making-machines was a bottleneck for all the war powers. The US least, but it was still an effect. Hence things like the Allied bombing of the German ball-bearing factory to wreck the aircraft engine supply chain.
spamizbad 6y ago
Sorry, but this just isn't true. It was far more difficult to manufacture an M1 Garand in 1940 than it is an N95 mask in 2020. There was a huge amount of custom Pratt & Whitney machinery built just to produce the rifle, some of which is still used today to produce other things btw!
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  What is your hypothesis on why the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Russia, China, etc. have all been relatively unable to dictate sufficient capacity into existence? Even if the US is uniquely sucking, why can't we just buy it from all these other countries which should hypothetically have been able to create production also?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    They have been able to, and Chinese respirator masks in particular are abundantly available in the US. But they use different industrial standards, so the Chinese masks are KN95s, and some health organizations don't want to use them.
    - carabiner 6y ago
      For good reason: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/22/covid-kn-95-masks-imported-china-dont-meet-standards-ecri/5806327002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/22/covid-...
- Ancapistani 6y ago
  I strongly disagree. I have a small lathe and mill sitting in my office right now. With those, I have everything technically necessary to build a Garand. Don't get me wrong - it would take a long time, and I would have to make substantial improvements to my tooling - I'd need to build a button rifling machine, for instance - but I have everything necessary to bootstrap production of M1 Garands in my office. No amount of time or hacking would let me produce the fabric necessary for disposable N95 masks. I'm quite confident of this - I worked on the issue for quite a while, as I was unemployed at the beginning of this pandemic. The best solution I found was making filter cartridges for existing reusable respirators from HEPA furnace filters and 3D printed parts.

ashtonkem 6y ago

You’re right, we’ve never produced cutting edge machinery en masse for a war before, this situation is completely new... Wait, that’s not right. That’s also ignoring scale. Getting a few machinists for rifles is pretty easy; getting all the machinists for total war is not. Comparative to the scale of government action and organization in WW2, manufacturing and distributing PPE is nothing.

vorpalhex 6y ago
A lot of people know how to build or operate a mill well enough to do most tasks. My dad does, my grandfather did, most of my uncles do. The particular fabric machine for N95 masks is very specialized, and building those machines has a failure rate - you may be producing fabric only sufficient for a N90 or N85 application - a lot of "dust" or "atv" masks are exactly that. The machines are physically large enough and with specialized enough parts you can't build one out of a machine shop. It'd be like demanding we mass produce Titan IVs tomorrow. America has built a Titan IV before, we've built a few - surely we could just crank out one a day right?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I’m not saying that making the basic machinery for PPE is easy compared to say, simple firearms. They’re obviously more complex. But they’re also a known problem; we’ve been making PPE out of the same basic materials since 1972. Compared to other large scale efforts the US has undergone to fight wars or handle other national pride situations, making more PPE machines is both cheaper and simpler. It does not require the creation of new technologies, nor the whole sale mobilization and re-organization of our society. All it requires is the application of enough money to buy an F-35 or two to rebuild the machines that were dismantled back in 2000. This is not complicated, we just lack the will as a society to fix this.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    What is your hypothesis on why the UK, France, Germany, Norway, etc. have not just dictated new capacity into existence? If they could do that, then even if the US was uniquely sucking wind, we could just buy from them. We can't.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      No idea. I don’t know enough about those countries to have a meaningful opinion.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Of course there are difficulties. Everything is difficult compared to just buying stuff from China. The entire point is that we used to tackle the difficulties and work hard to succeed, rather than simply give up and recite reasons why things cannot be done.

pjc50 6y ago

Machinery, and machine-making-machines was a bottleneck for all the war powers. The US least, but it was still an effect. Hence things like the Allied bombing of the German ball-bearing factory to wreck the aircraft engine supply chain.

spamizbad 6y ago

Sorry, but this just isn't true. It was far more difficult to manufacture an M1 Garand in 1940 than it is an N95 mask in 2020. There was a huge amount of custom Pratt & Whitney machinery built just to produce the rifle, some of which is still used today to produce other things btw!

Consultant32452 6y ago
What is your hypothesis on why the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Russia, China, etc. have all been relatively unable to dictate sufficient capacity into existence? Even if the US is uniquely sucking, why can't we just buy it from all these other countries which should hypothetically have been able to create production also?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  They have been able to, and Chinese respirator masks in particular are abundantly available in the US. But they use different industrial standards, so the Chinese masks are KN95s, and some health organizations don't want to use them.
  - carabiner 6y ago
    For good reason: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/22/covid-kn-95-masks-imported-china-dont-meet-standards-ecri/5806327002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/22/covid-...
Ancapistani 6y ago
I strongly disagree. I have a small lathe and mill sitting in my office right now. With those, I have everything technically necessary to build a Garand. Don't get me wrong - it would take a long time, and I would have to make substantial improvements to my tooling - I'd need to build a button rifling machine, for instance - but I have everything necessary to bootstrap production of M1 Garands in my office. No amount of time or hacking would let me produce the fabric necessary for disposable N95 masks. I'm quite confident of this - I worked on the issue for quite a while, as I was unemployed at the beginning of this pandemic. The best solution I found was making filter cartridges for existing reusable respirators from HEPA furnace filters and 3D printed parts.