6 ms·
Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
https://archive.ph/wtC7m https://archive.ph/wtC7m
- atombender 3mo agohttps://archive.is/wtC7m https://archive.is/wtC7m
- karakoram 3mo agoA very important question to ask. Should the US make medical gloves?
- Hikikomori 3mo ago1-200% tariff applied at random if you don't.
- looksjjhg 3mo agoThe US started the tariff game btw
- Hikikomori 3mo agoThat is what I'm referring to.
- tonyedgecombe 3mo agoAlso what the cost is. If the US really wants to reshore this sort of work then it will become materially poorer.
- barrenko 3mo agoYeah, you should make stuff medical staff needs.
- expedition32 3mo agoOr maybe not start stupid wars but this is America we're talking so meh...
- kaashif 3mo agoAsking this question only a handful of years after a global pandemic... If the next pandemic is 50% deadly, not being able to make gloves is surely the canary in the coal mine proving we wouldn't be able to make any other PPE. And no country can rely on another if it's do or die. Other blocs will keep to themselves.
- raverbashing 3mo agoIt's amazing how much those spreadsheet heads know nothing about how the actual world works
- vrganj 3mo agoYou gotta optimize everything for the market man! It's magic! Everything will work out if we only make number go up! Who cares about silly stuff like health emergencies, the climate catastrophe or war. Number must go up!
- ikari_pl 3mo agocorrection: the number must go up FASTER. if it just keeps going up same as yesterday, we will lose investors
- fartfeatures 3mo agoRedundancy is just waste wearing a trench coat etc etc.
- philipallstar 3mo agoYou don't need to optimise for the market. The market is the optimising machine. Get in its way with slow regulators or subsidies or bailouts and you get all the problems.
- vrganj 3mo agoHeh sure, it's great at optimizing. The problem is it's an optimizing function for the rich getting richer, not for the good of society, not for reducing human suffering, not even, y'know, the survival of the human race.
- jofzar 3mo agoLooks like most/all manufacturing happens in the SEA/China, so I can see the logic that it could be considered a military risk for it to not be manufactured/possibility to scale manufacturing in America.
- jerlam 3mo agoBerry Amendment requires US military to buy items manufactured in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_Amendment
- roysting 3mo agoYes. Next question
- rileymat2 3mo agoWhy is it so simple? Instead of investing billions, perhaps a stockpile is a better strategy.
- roysting 3mo agoThat would be a good thing for you to research to build an understanding for the scale of what you are simplifying. Here's a start; just alone during a rather non-pandemic of 2020-2022 the USA alone used about 1.8 billion, with a B, gloves per week ... week.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rileymat2 3mo agoSo 1 billion dollars buys about 8 billion gloves? Or about 4 weeks? So for 12 billion dollars that's a years slack? I am not sure what you are getting at, continuously spending money on cost ineffective gloves just in case there is a problem sometime, including the upfront investment. The scale of the storage? We have 6000 hospitals in the US. which would have to store about 2 million gloves a piece if you decentralized it. The storage space would be about 2 10x10x10 cubes in each location, probably varying dramatically by hospital size. Of course that is just proper hospitals, we have many many more medical facilities that use them. I don't see storage being a problem. So what is the scale we are talking here? A complete 6 month supply would be half the cost, which still seems excessive. And this is a pandemic scenario we are talking about that uses a lot of gloves, not a national security concern where we would not have that much additional use.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoThat’s brilliant - the government could pay every hospital to stockpile the annual needs for itself and any local clinics and they would just rotate through the stock and replenish as normal.
- maxglute 3mo agoSomeone already decided US should. The important question is whether 1B should have gotten the job done, and if not... is it matter of throwing good $$$ after bad $$$... or is it just bad sign 1B wasn't enough.
- petra 3mo agoI wonder if they can at least create a small scale NBR factory.
- einpoklum 3mo agoThe story says the US doesn't have the raw material(s): NBR. Not quite sure what that is.
- oasisaimlessly 3mo agoNBR = nitrile butadiene rubber, a synthetic rubber. Not really a raw material, as it's synthesized.
- RetroTechie 3mo agoWith all the chemical industry already in the US, and $1B to throw at it, production capacity for the raw material couldn't be included? It's not like you need a metric ton of it to produce a box of gloves.
- wildzzz 3mo agoThe issue is that domestic sources of NBR are few because of the type of petroleum extraction we do here. This makes the cost of NBR relatively high and consequently makes the gloves pricey compared to imported ones. We can definitely make.a glove but no one wants to buy them.
- PowerElectronix 3mo agoMaking them? Not in the least. But being capable of making them? It's a must, be it gloves, EVs, semis, or screws.
- fl0id 3mo agoIt's all a question of price, based on the article. And not planning how much it takes to start up. In any case it's also not feasible to keep a plant on standby, just in case you need it one day.
- warumdarum 3mo agoThe more important part is how to make people who ask this question a permanent pariahs?
- derektank 3mo agoYou think someone should be made a permanent pariah for suggesting medical gloves be manufactured in Malaysia or Thailand, rather than the US? Why?
- goalieca 3mo agoThe USA can make anything if there’s money in it. Right now, I just don’t think there’s any.
- like_any_other 3mo agoIt should be able to. A country that can't, cannot hope to remain sovereign in anything but name, for long.
- t0mpr1c3 3mo agoThe thing about autarky. It ain't for people who don't want to work in a plastics factory, I guess. And it contributed to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Funny coincidence that.
- rasz 3mo agonah, you can always import from friendly nations like Denmark, Spain, Canada, Mexico..
- taneq 3mo agoIs this the new “China can’t manufacture a ball point pen”? (Which I strongly suspect they can do at this point. :)
- maxglute 3mo agoBallpoint pen tips was proxy Li Keqiang used to shame PRC industry to build precision micromachining capabilities (tungsten carbide for high-end munitions etc), TISCO did it in like a year and it upgraded entire PRC metallurgy chain. US struggling to make 100% indigenized gloves 5+ years after covid... is well maybe not something new relative to US industrial decline, but certainly something else. I'm sure US can... but at what cost and all that.
- code_duck 3mo agoThe article states some of the companies successfully made gloves, but customers such as hospitals considered the prices too high, which is why they're looking to the federal government to be the primary customer now.
- maxglute 3mo agoArticle says 1% of gloves are made in US, but US doesn't produce any of the rubber, so raw inputs not American.
- probably_wrong 3mo agoMore like the new "America can't manufacture a grill scrubber" [1]. For those who haven't seen the video, YouTuber Destin Sandlin ("Smarter every day") tried to build a grill scrubber using 100% materials from the US and failed. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
- brynnbee 3mo agoThe claim he failed seems like hyperbole. He couldn't find an existing manufacturer for chainmail in the US but this is a fairly trivial and niche thing to create, and is more a reflection of how uncommon it is for people to need that specific type and size of chain mail than it is that the US is incapable of making it. The other part is from Costa Rica only bc he hasn't yet made the injection mold for it, like he did for the handle itself.
- cherryteastain 3mo agoHow are these types of awards usually structured? Are they just grants? If so, doesn't that create a perverse incentive to take the money even if you never intend to deliver the result?
- ahoka 3mo agoNo way! That would be a handout.
- Brybry 3mo agoYou can see the two awards on govspending. [1][2] Interestingly govspending says only $8.7 million of the $10 million award has been outlayed but I guess it's possible it just doesn't have the outlay info for the $123 million contract? I think the contract type is a 'firm fixed-price definitive contract' but what happens when the contractor doesn't manage to create the production capability in the contract? I found a FOIA request on muckrock[3] but it didn't seem to have anything related to the contract in terms of penalties. [1][$123.1 million] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA850521C0005_9700_-NONE-_-NONE- https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA850521C0005_970... https://www.highergov.com/contract/FA850521C0005/ https://www.highergov.com/contract/FA850521C0005/ https://g2xchange.com/app/awards/contracts/CONT_AWD_FA850521C0005_9700_-NONE-_-NONE- https://g2xchange.com/app/awards/contracts/CONT_AWD_FA850521... [2][$10 million] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75A50525C00001_7505_-NONE-_-NONE- https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75A50525C00001_75... [3] https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/contract-information-for-blue-star-nbr-sam-gngwyf8kedm9-air-force-127598/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/con...
- vaxsupport3333 3mo ago[flagged]
- vaxsupport3333 3mo ago[flagged]
- Alien1Being 3mo agoDecline and Fall of the American Empire https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/decline-and-fall-of-the-american https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/decline-and-fall-of-the-a... On the other hand the US is still very good at bombing small, poor countries...
- Danox 3mo agoThat time is coming to an end…
- cyberge99 3mo agoNeeds an orthogonal approach. Perhaps Elmer's glue that physician’s can dip their hands in and rinse off?
- fkdk 3mo agoSome of my early research (elementary school) suggested that certain glues can form a peelable, skin-like layer. Maybe that could be a promising way forward?
- marking-time 3mo ago:) Love the early research. It seems to me that your product could be useful, particularly since those gloves are hard to put on.
- biophysboy 3mo agoI did the same research in elementary school! My parents were my seed investors. They asked for 25% of equity - all I ended up giving them was some collectible artwork for the fridge.
- michaelmrose 3mo agoGloves are sterile wouldn't this tend to embed whatever is on the hands in the surface as it dries?
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoWhich is fine - when you put on gloves, they just cover up whatever is on your skin in the same way.
- michaelmrose 3mo agoOn the outside of the surface as well which is not fine. Goo would tend to irritate the skin stick in your pores and be challenging to quickly change when you contaminated one exterior which happens a lot
- jongjong 3mo agoIn most of the west, technically talented people are fully subjugated to suits so I'm not surprised. Sometimes, there are brief moments when technical people are given the control they need to deliver... But after a few years, they are again subjugated to MBAs in suits again and the capacity is lost. I see this constantly nowadays. As a technical person, there are many companies/roles where the constraints set you up for failure from the beginning. I've delivered some very complex projects but I've also worked at jobs on far simpler projects where I knew since day 1 that the project wouldn't pan out due to counter-productive technical constraints being imposed... but you know the company is well positioned in the financial system and that the outcome won't matter; so you take the job anyway. You still get the high pay and the prestige from the brand name. There are many companies like this where people seem to keep failing upwards and stock price always goes up.
- orphereus 3mo agoShouldn't free market reward companies that go the other way and where people don't "fail upwards"? It is kind of demoralising to think otherwise, but it seems it is true. We see it everywhere. Bad companies making bad decisions keep surviving, and actually the vast majority of companies are like this. One implication is that MBAs in suits that make bad decisions are actually right and their decisions are not bad. The other implication is that there is no free market, no meritocracy and the truth is, game was rigged from the start. Edit: I should add that most of this is anegdotal evidence and a general feeling I have. It is not a very powerful argument I'm making.
- jongjong 3mo agoI agree, a free market would work that way... Yet 'fail upwards' and zombie companies seem to be the default. Personally I don't believe that what we have in the west is a free market. I think these days, it's probably less free than the one in China. The market here is completely smothered by regulations. For example, about a month ago, I saw a video about people farming frogs in China... To collect secretions for medical use. At first I thought WTF. But then they mentioned how much it sells for and I thought "Wow. We have a lot of cane toads here everywhere, it would be a great business to do here." I actually started thinking of doing this... This is really out there for me because I'm a software engineer; but I started seriously considering this. But guess what? I did my research and turns out it's illegal to do it in my country (Australia) because the frog secretions would be considered an illicit substance and you need to go through some expensive process to obtain a license. Yes, you need a license to farm frogs... A few weeks back, I read news about someone who got arrested for farming cockroaches (as reptile food for zoos)... It's like all the entry-point business opportunities have become illegal. Every time I heard of a case like this where some really good niche business opportunity is illegal in Australia, I asked my AI if this practice is legal in China and the answer is almost always yes. The other day, I was watching a documentary about Philippines and I saw a kind of makeshift resort built literally on top of a coral reef. Really amazing looking. They seemed to be getting good reviews and actually making money... This would NEVER be allowed in my country. At best, you could purchase a ship for millions of dollars then apply for expensive licenses, then you'd have limits on how many people you can take at a time, etc... So many constraints and regulations. Such artificially high capital requirements. It would be a worse experience and less profitable; and you'd have to be filthy rich just to get a chance to engage in that highly constrained, mediocre business activity.
- swarnie 3mo agoI do good price for you my Amerifriend For 500m i'll make all the gloves you want, we can slap as many X's on the size as you desire/require. Let me know. Waiting for your call.
- lthi747 3mo agoAm I the only one, that can’t read the article because it requires subscription?
- CoastalCoder 3mo agoOne of the comments provides an archive link to the story. I was kind of able to read that on my Android phone, but something on the page made panning really janky so I gave up.
- dmix 3mo agoThe article mentions access to NBR latex being an issue, but doesn’t explain that this is less commonly produced in America because they produces much more shale gas these days which doesn’t result in enough butadiene needed. So the most important supply chain to build the product is mostly coming out of Asian and European crackers. Giving an advantage to the Malaysian factories on top of the other lower costs of business there. Which makes you wonder why the government thought it was a feasible investment or if they didn’t care and hand waved it with ‘national security’.
- voakbasda 3mo agoWhen politicians act, they look for political wins, not financial ones. If they get both, great, but they could care less about fiscal responsibility. The system’s purpose is what it does.
- gdhvkkk 3mo agoNice comment. And to me this just points out that due to specialization, you’re probably always going to be higher cost on something. But that’s not necessarily bad https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040615/what-are-economic-impacts-specialization.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040615/what-are-eco...
- petra 3mo agoIn cases of emergency, like COVID, is butadiene supply limited or for the right price the US, and in general, the world, could get enough butadiene ?
- Illniyar 3mo agoThe article headline makes it seem like the factories couldn't make the gloves. But further down it says that the cost was double and factories couldn't get buyers. These are very different failure modes, and speak to very different solutions.
- reactordev 3mo agoOne sounds incapable from a skill perspective, the other is incapable from a market perspective. I’ll take the later over the former any day.
- samsolomon 3mo agoAgree. The problem is over extended lengths of time the people with the skills to make these things—or make tools that make them—will leave the workforce. That's how this goes from being a market issue to a skill issue.
- stingraycharles 3mo agoThe later form was part of the design from the beginning: relying on imports for something this critical in times of an epidemic was a supply chain risk. It was never intended to compete in terms of pricing. It baffles me that this wasn’t made more explicit? That seems to be the root cause of the failure.
- SanjayMehta 3mo agoOnce the epidemic was over, stakeholders forgot about the original motives.
- matchbok3 3mo agoWhether the US can make "gloves" is actually less interesting than whether the US even has the technical ability, infrastructure, and knowledge to spin up a glove factory in an emergency. Just like drones, batter tech, etc. Another area where the current admin is failing, and putting our country behind China.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoAs bad as the current administration is, this is one area where they are trying to reverse globalization in the stupidest way possible, so not their fault. These things happened years before now.
- Danox 3mo ago[dead]
- OutOfHere 3mo agoCheap agentic robotics can change this by decreasing the cost of labor.
- ur-whale 3mo agohttps://archive.is/wtC7m https://archive.is/wtC7m
- whatever1 3mo agoI wonder whether with AI we will be able to document more efficiently all of the nuances of production so if we need to ramp up a forgotten process we can do it faster. There is so much domain expertise that exists in production that is not documented, because who has time for writing documentation when your floor is on fire. But if writing documentation is something free and can be automated (maybe from the company internal comms), maybe we have a chance?
- delusional 3mo agoHow would the "AI" figure out what the process is? That's non-sense.
- whatever1 3mo agoBecause of the slack complaints?
- shimman 3mo agoFriend, you need to seriously get out of your tech bubble and talk to real workers in person.
- whatever1 3mo agoThe shift managers are on IM, sending email escalations to the site managers for exceptions etc. Definitely at end of shift they do a summary for the handover and regular reporting to leadership. Maybe not slack but they do leave digital traces. Workers in a well ran assembly line should not have to figure out anything. I could search for “belt jam” in outlook decades ago. Why do you see it as a difficult technical task? The info is there, nobody has the time to organize it.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoPaywall.
- black6 3mo agoAsian manufacturing will continue to undercut Western manufacturing on cost due to the absence of safety culture and the spending that comes with it. The value of human life is higher in the West, and the manufacturing costs reflect that.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoThat has nothing to do with the issue here, which is that the raw materials cost more because we don’t have access to the right natural resources.
- Danox 3mo agoMost Coastal areas, lakes, rivers, river deltas near large human settlements say differently in the USA and across the world, the United States had better start thinking long-term and figuring out where they want to be in the world, time is running out. The trajectory right now is downward…