President Trump has made some half-way progress toward becoming a President by announcing a National Emergency (and it is not about Mexicans crossing our Southern border), but he has to keep spoiling it with things like saying that the government is not a purchasing agent in the corona(Chinese)virus. Yet that is exactly what is needed instead to leave it up to each governor. And it is needed to be determined just how much of everything may be needed in this pandemic While it is good for the President's morale to appear on TV with the press briefing on corona(Chinese)virus every day, we need him off trying to make sure that all the supplies needed are in production and increasing production. After all, he says we are at war. What is our military effort in this war - guarding the border to make sure no illegal Mexicans are crossing over??
Trump's declaring a National Emergency and that we are at war is permitting the military to get involved. New York has ordered 4 field hospitals from the DOD that will have 250 beds each and come with ventilators. Maybe the cavalry is coming?
Trump says that the benefit of coronavirus is that it lets him deal with illegal immigration as he sees fit, the part of the problem Trump's base treasures. I find that kind of weird, but it does deal with the external part of the problem. At this point, I think that the internal problem with coronavirus is more important.
The latest coming shortage appears to be of swabs for nose and mouth.* Why don't we have some sort of organization looking at these things to make sure that we can fulfill the total package.?
American industry is willing to help with the Pandemic but is awaiting orders for the most part. For example, a company called Steel Case has said they could convert to making hospital beds and is awaiting orders. Is has been known that the number of hospital beds needed is going to increase alarmingly.**
Oh, and are medical masks ever going to catch up with the need? There does seem to be some pickup in deliveries, but nearly all the news you hear is of state and hospitals and physicians saying they can't get the HP-95 masks. I think the major maker of these masks in the U.S. is 3M.
3M Co. MMM, ... said Friday it had doubled global production of N95 masks and plans to continue to expand amid concerns about dwindling supplies of the respirator masks for health workers treating COVID-19 patients. The company's output of N95 masks is at an annual rate of more than 1.1 billion a year, 3M said. The company is increasing investments, mostly in the U.S., to expand its global capacity by more than 30% in the next 12 months and maximizing production of other products used to combat the illness, including hand sanitizers, disinfectants and air-filtration products, it said, without providing dollar figures.***
At least one other company is also ramping up production.
So why is it so hard to produce new masks? The New York Times reported that China made half of the world’s masks before the outbreak, and while factory production has increased nearly twelvefold, the country has kept most of its inventory as it sought to control the virus. US mask manufacturers are also seeing unprecedented demand for masks, with Prestige Ameritech, the country’s biggest producer, aiming to make 1 million masks a day, compared to an average 250,000 before the pandemic.****
The latest coming shortage appears to be of swabs for nose and mouth. Why don't we have some sort of organization looking at these things to make sure that we can fulfill the total package? Oh well, GM and Tesla have said they will start making ventilators. That is not going to be so easy, I think.
* https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/18/817801222/testing-swabs-run-in-short-supply-as-makers-try-to-speed-up-production
** https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-hospital-bed-crunch-capacity-18e22c81-006b-4654-a74c-40ff86488431.html
*** https://www.marketwatch.com/story/3m-to-increase-production-of-n95-masks-other-coronavirus-related-products-2020-03-20
https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/top-suppliers/surgical-mask-manufacturer-suppliers/
**** https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/20/21188369/face-masks-short-supply-coronavirus-donations
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment