Part of the current shortage is also due to companies like my friend's, who treated N95s like toilet paper and started stockpiling them as soon as the virus hit China. At one point, they had 500,000 N95s in China and 20,000 in the US. Now that the spread has slowed in China, the Chinese locations are offering to ship 200,000 of their remaining stock back to the company's US locations, two of which have verified cases of COVID-19.
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU] On Behalf Of Yaritza Brinker
Sent: Thursday, April 2, 2020 11:17 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] N-95 disinfection and reuse: The NIOSH Guidance has Been Released!
Objectively speaking, the shortage is a mixture of decisions that go back way further.
WHO reported back in February the demand for PPE and ventilators was 100 times greater than normal.
The N95 stock pile was depleted during the 2009 swine flu, and it was not restocked by either the current nor the past administration.
The national stock pile has not designed to respond to an issue of the current magnitude. While it was intended to help protect the country from biological, chemical, and nuclear threats, the amounts of supplies at full volumes wouldn't have been enough to face covid19.
Whether the current administration's response is adequate or lacking, naive or intentional, is still a matter of opinion. History will tell once everyone in the current administration has retired and they actually start to talk honestly.
Thank you,
Yaritza Brinker
260.827.5402
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU> On Behalf Of ILPI Support
Sent: Thursday, April 2, 2020 9:22 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] N-95 disinfection and reuse: The NIOSH Guidance has Been Released!
Apparently, the shortage in this country is because our Federal Government has failed to step in, declare an emergency, and immediately regulate the trade in masks as well as banning their export:
At one point he received an update that 43 million masks were available in New Jersey, in the same time-frame that federal and state leaders were saying in press conferences that they were "scouring the globe" for masks. But the masks in New Jersey, along with many million more, didn't go to any domestic buyer. Instead, according to the broker, they were all purchased by foreign buyers.
"Most of the masks are leaving the country," he told me.
By the end of the day, roughly 280 million masks from warehouses around the U.S. had been purchased by foreign buyers and were earmarked to leave the country, according to the broker Ñ and that was in one day.
Capitalism is the best economic system, hands down. But it is a terrible social system.
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