>This is a complexity issue. Yup, and lots of folks here are missing that point or don't appreciate it enough. While I've never dealt with N95 masks or anythin

>This is a complexity issue. Yup, and lots of folks here are missing that point or don't appreciate it enough. While I've never dealt with N95 masks or anything medical, there's a few things that immediately pop into my mind. 1. What's the certification process to get "N95"? From the body armor world (I was in it for just a little while years ago, things may have changed in the last 5+ years), getting NIJ certified is not completely simple. It's a time consuming process to get and keep standards (testing and manufacturing) to keep a ballistic grade. 1-3 months for new testing when the labs aren't swamped with armor to test (first timers in the field get "extra" testing). Since a N95 mask is life safety, I assume there's a process of submitting to 3rd party labs for quality, gov inspection of your manufacturing process and the batch testing against with 3rd party labs. How long does it take and how much does it cost? Just because you're finally up and running 6 months later, doesn't mean you're done. It would suck to do all that, then have the current leaders just steam roll your little operation's ass to crippling debt and layoffs. 2. What are the material requirements and how's that supply chain looking? If "everyone" is making N95 masks, how hard is it to even get the qualified materials needed? It would suck to pay all the money for equipment, training, personnel and the lab testing fees, then find out you can't even get enough stock of the materials. Then just to enter a completely flooded field. Older players get first dibs from distributors due to prior relationships both in time and yearly purchase amounts. That's the two things off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure there's more, bigger issues I'm ignorant of. Now, do I believe that there should be an "strategic supply of smaller manufacturers" that are prepped pre-crisis to fulfill such needs? Absol-fucking-lutely. But that's to be setup pre-crisis. Not during. Covid is a wake up call on the manufacturing needs of the USA. Any argument that globalization will save the USA in crisis is now dead and out the window. This applies to every other country too. Covid showed that every country has to think their own country first before they can help others. Situations like these makes things way more complicated and difficult on an already complex, fragile system. Just In Time Inventory only works if everything is "good and stable". While I love LEAN and understand the economic advantage of JIT, you still have to plan for big fuck ups, whether you like it or not. Reality doesn't seem to care what we all like. Covid so far has been a love-tap of problem. If this was worse than a 0.5% yearly infection rate and worse than a 2% death rate, there would have been some serious, long term problems that we don't even want to imagine.