Thread by @AbraarKaran

"As a whistle-blower report would later reveal, in January [2020], Department of Health and Human Services officials effectively dismissed an offer from one of America’s few remaining N95 manufacturers, Prestige Ameritech, to expand its production lines"

nytimes.com/2020/11/17/mag…

2/ "Steve Francis, a special agent in an investigatory division of the D.H.S., told me that the illicit P.P.E. market was so profitable that some transnational criminal organizations turned from smuggling humans and narcotics to moving masks."

Wow. #Covid19 #BetterMasks

3/ "The mayor of Los Angeles described cutting a check for a shipment of masks, only to have FEMA swoop in at the last moment. The governor of Montana complained on a conference call to President Trump that his state lost 4 or 5 orders in the previous week to federal agencies"

4/ "After Massachusetts officials came to suspect that the federal government had snatched supplies already in transit, the state’s Republican governor arranged for over a million N95s to be flown in from Shenzhen on the New England Patriots’ private jet. "

I remember this.

5/ "The Trump administration, however, appeared to do the opposite. On March 19, President Trump declared at a press briefing: “The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

6/ So Jared Kushner was supposed to solve the #PPE crisis in this epidemic response?

It now all makes sense.

#BetterMasks

7/ Interesting-- the DPA was, to an extent, invoked early in the epidemic, to increase respirators for medical workers.

But the federal government left it at that; no plan for any level of public distribution. No public health strategy. No epidemic response. #BetterMasks

8/ "domestic production would more than double over the summer, hitting around 160 million respirators monthly in November. In total, the administration would invoke the D.P.A. at least 30 times to expand the domestic medical manufacturing base..."

Far short of projected needs

9/ "In August, a nationwide survey of nurses reported that 68 percent of them were reusing N95s for days or weeks at a time, often in violation of C.D.C. guidelines. Supply and demand for respirators were locked in a life-or-death race."

Unacceptable

10/ "The administration had used the D.P.A. to compel experienced ventilator producers to share their production techniques with neophytes, leading to one of its signature supply-chain successes in rapidly expanding ventilator production. But it declined to do the same w/ N95s"

11/ This is a key point right here. This is another legacy of the Trump administration. This is why we are still faced with a lack of #BetterMasks

12/ "Admiral Polowczyk felt that the Trump administration had done what it had set out to do"

Here we are pushing for #BetterMasks - need to make sure that those who are in charge believe it's their responsibility to get those to the public.

That wasn't the case before.

Cc @zeynep @linseymarr @jljcolorado @DrEricDing @AliNouriPhD @nataliexdean @gregggonsalves @jabarocas @rvenkayya @thehowie read this piece (or thread) on N95 mask supply chain failure