It didn't have to be that way.
It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.That'd be about twenty million masks in the pipeline that aren't there. Maybe that wouldn't have been enough, but it's not a piddly number. Twenty million more masks; maybe the hospitals wouldn't be reusing them for as long.
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer. ... In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.
Trump's good at running his mouth and his twitter feed, but that's about it.
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Governor “Violating judicial orders is OK if you’re rich and white” Abbott trumpeted using the National Guard to help Prestige Ameritech ramp up basic mask production just last month. Meanwhile, as Ted Cruz gets his hair cut at said lady’s salon, and the state licensing board remains silent, another salon owner isn’t getting much support. This lady had the audacity to have a Facebook ad run during the mandated closing of salons (the order the other lady violated) and is threatened with lose of license. Apparently your salon being closed and the ad having been paid for months ago isn’t good enough when your salon is in the poor section of Dallas and you are a black female with no wealthy clients.
I’d pay a good amount of money to see Ted Cruz dropped off in South Dallas, near that other salon.
There were so many ways for Donny to screw this up, and he seems to have rooted out every single one. From "hoax" to no p/e, to bullshitting us. To even sending away what little preparation stuff we had.
I think someone should write a book about how "not to respond to a pandemic", and use all of Donny's experiences in that book.
Not that I'd want to read it mind you, but as reference for future, actual, Presidents.
w3ski
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