If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is working 24/7, guess again

The mask situation in the US is truly fucked up right now. I&#x27;ve been finding and sending masks and other PPE to the US from China. Started out for friends and family then it expanded to friends-of-friends, then anybody. It has a really weird dynamic.<p>I&#x27;ve contacted over 100 hospitals. They don&#x27;t want to help themselves. It&#x27;s all about pushing people into a web form that fronts a bureaucratic system that supposedly allocates resources efficiently through a central clearing authority (never heard back from any of them), covering their ass in regards to regulatory requirements, and not allowing anyone to take advantage of them by charging money.<p>Individuals aren&#x27;t much better. They&#x27;ve had so much conflicting information drilled into them that of the few who still think masks are needed by regular people, many feel so guilty about getting them that they can&#x27;t bring themselves to do it. Or can&#x27;t wear them in public because people will judge them for taking away from nurses even though the same hospitals the nurses work at have made it clear they would rather have their employees work unprotected than buy something not approved by the FDA or stoop so low as to work with someone who can&#x27;t donate everything for free.<p>Have had way better success working with retired civic-minded business guys who can buy stuff through their local civic group and just get it done. It takes a surprising amount of almost outright harassment from these dudes to get the hospitals to either accept a donation or come up with a list of what they need and arrange funding, but so far getting hooked up with this type of person has been the only way I&#x27;ve found to get PPE (at least the kind that&#x27;s still available) into a hospital.

One angle that this article missed: anti-price gouging sentiment has a lot to do with why the factory isn’t running 24&#x2F;7. Imagine if he could charge 10x his normal price (ie $1&#x2F;mask, which is much less than the value a mask provides.) I suspect plenty of employees would happily work 100 hour weeks for the duration of the crisis if they were getting paid $150&#x2F;hr. Instead, he’s forced to take a slower, more conservative approach to ramping up to avoid risking bankruptcy.

It is shameful that the US has abandoned its manufacturing base and allowed its productive capacity to be destroyed. The pandemic exposes how weak this makes us, but I don’t know that things will change when the pandemic eventually ends. Once things calm down, I doubt people will retain the ability to see the downsides of always chasing the absolute lowest cost supplier.

Wow. Looks like he learned his lesson. On the other hand, we American consumers haven&#x27;t.<p>I&#x27;ll echo what most have said here already: the moment this crisis is over, we&#x27;ll be overseas trying to find the cheapest possible price. We don&#x27;t care about keeping the local guy in business. We care about <i>our margins</i>.<p>I&#x27;d hate to say it but what made us great, could very well be our downfall...

This is a red herring issue. The problem isn’t that Chinese won’t sell the US masks. It’s that the US is trying to buy too many too late. We could have spent the past decade stockpiling them.<p>American protectionism is actually part of what created this problem: it was only this week that the Chinese KN95 standard was approved for use by the FDA.

The question that this story doesn&#x27;t answer (unless I missed it) is why hospitals are refusing to sign contracts right now when they are so badly in need of masks. Either that, or pay whatever price is necessary to get the factory to produce more masks without a contract. Is it lack of budget? Legal&#x2F;administrative hurdles? Something else?

I took a quick skim of the article and it looks like all it would take to solve this problem is for him to raise prices (clearly the current prices are below the market clearing rate) and forcing customers to pay upfront (or at least put the money in a trust or something).<p>&gt;“Last time he geared up and went three shifts a day working his tail off,” the mayor recalled. “As soon as the issue died, he didn’t have any sales. He had to pay unemployment for all these people, and he had to gear down.”<p>Doesn&#x27;t seem to be a real issue if those extra costs are factored in<p>&gt;Hospitals promised to stick with him afterward, but they broke their promise. The allure of cheaper Chinese masks was too great for hospital purchasing groups to ignore.<p>Ask for money upfront, or get it in writing and sue later.

I cannot blame him one bit, and as a small business, he cant absorb the losses from having to scale back either.<p>I sincerely hope the lasting change from this crisis is a changing attitude towards where we build things.

Buying American doesn&#x27;t increase shareholder value or executive bonuses. Reducing costs does. At least, that&#x27;s the mantra<p>Walmart became the giant it is because while people agree that supporting local businesses is important (especially when they and their neighbors own those businesses), they still could not help themselves and chose to do their shopping at Walmart because it was cheaper. Then many of the small local businesses died.<p>Modern (American&#x2F;western&#x2F;and-possibly-everywhere-else) people are really terrible at balancing short vs long term priorities.

For clothing, the Berry Amendment ensures that the US has strategic capacity, by mandating that certain government purchases are made from suppliers that assemble US fabric with US labor. Maybe there needs to be a similar policy for medical equipment.

&gt;&gt; “Create American jobs. Buy American. … It’s hot air.”<p>This quote really got me. Being in Texas you would think people value American made.

The photos on ebay and amazon of the Chinese factories making surgical masks (not N95) appear to be 99% automated.<p>The machines in that article appear rather different.<p>But it&#x27;s not just hospitals, all of US is built on &quot;just in time&quot; fulfillment for decades now. That&#x27;s why a government stockpile was important for emergencies, it&#x27;s not unrealistic to expect government to have that role. You just can&#x27;t have people in charge of government that spend all their time dismantling it and expect it not to fail.

That is an awful website for people in the EU. 4 different pop ups then 20 seconds after page load a final one saying you can&#x27;t read the page outside the USA.

There&#x27;s no way to win selling cheap but critical supplies on the spot market. If the price goes down your customers flee. If the price goes up you can&#x27;t charge the higher price because that would be &quot;gouging&quot;.<p>So his solution is contracts. The fact that people aren&#x27;t signing them shows their true intentions.<p>What I can&#x27;t quite figure out is why, during the good times, a $0.10 consumable for a $4000 operation needs to be made more efficient so badly that the only way to produce the thing is in a communist country with no environmental controls.

Many voters want the government run like a business, and this is a good example of why you don’t run the government like a business.

&gt; “Last time he geared up and went three shifts a day working his tail off,” the mayor recalled. “As soon as the issue died, he didn’t have any sales. He had to pay unemployment for all these people, and he had to gear down.”<p>This would be a good time to hire temp labor through a staffing agency; you pay a bit of a premium for that, but you also don&#x27;t put the employees directly on your payroll that way (they&#x27;re employees of the staffing agency instead, so said agency is then responsible for finding new work). People need the jobs, America needs masks, this guy wants to make and sell masks, win-win-win.<p>Like, I didn&#x27;t really see a compelling reason in the article why that factory <i>isn&#x27;t</i> working 24&#x2F;7. I know of plenty of companies that deal in similarly-high-demand-in-pandemics products (my employer included) that <i>are</i> ramping up and running 24&#x2F;7 and doing everything they can to get those products to people who need them. Most of them are doing that by hiring temps.

Not sure writing the feds is a way to change the free market system. Not for one guy; not on a dime.<p>Perhaps a measure allowing emergency part-time workers? Why does he have to be &#x27;fooled again&#x27;, why not just increase production temporarily?<p>It sounds to me, this guy is being spiteful. Wants to make a point. Maybe not the right climate to make his point in.

Smart to have hospitals sign longer term contracts for supply now. Sounds like he learned his lesson last time.<p>Also this guy sounds kind of butt hurt about buy American rheteroic. I agree but if you are charging 5x on a commodity vs china, I mean rah rah America only goes so far.

Seems like a good opportunity to sign 5-year supply contracts with healthcare organizations.

How long does it take to build a mask factory? Maybe we should stockpile machines that can rapidly ramp up production of millions of face masks per day in preparation for the next pandemic.

This is interesting. Being a Brazilian, our government has been always protectionist. Even in the current New Republic period. &quot;Industries vital to our country must be protected&quot;. And oddly enough, that idea was shared by many politicians, even when they were opposed to each other.<p>The govt has been harshly criticized by the recent, new libertarians, for the import taxes increased prices to the end consumer and scared away foreign investors. Turns out that we had national mask makers ready to step up. Plus, textile and other industries decided to also jump in to help. I bought three masks before taking a flight recently, I didn&#x27;t have any trouble finding them, paid less than a dollar for a locally made N95 equivalent; it seems that many of my flight mates had the same idea. I guess our old politicians nailed it, at least this time.

1. Domestic production 2. Low prices 3. Surge capacity meeting sudden demand<p>You get to choose 2 of the 3. This guy wants protectionist policies to help him stay in a more sustainable business. You can&#x27;t fault him for wanting to serve his own interests. But we could&#x27;ve prepared for this by having the proper stockpile in anticipation of an emergency.

It seems US is very much going for short term gratification instead of long term building of industrial nation. Moving manufacturing offshore into China and other cheaper countries + mega multinational corporations starving small businesses or buying them up so they can get away with price gorging and lobbying for favorable laws.<p>China said no to Google and Facebook, they let Baidu and Tencent build the technological prowess. China manufactures most of the worlds electronics, they help their cities foster ecologies. e.g Shenzen, Guangzhou, Tianjin e.t.c<p>Meanwhile US has been losing its manufacturing edge over time. We can&#x27;t be price competitive to China because we haven&#x27;t invested in the ecosystem necessary for mass scale production. Our governmental leaders have frequent conflict of interests because they&#x27;ve worked at previous mega corps.<p>US can no longer think and take actions for the interest for the whole nation. Corporate interests are winning out. Seeing how the $2 trillion stimulus was a giant coop, to Jared Kushner (neopotism) saying &quot;National Stockpile is for us, and not for the states.&quot; COVID-19 is exposing how incapable we are as a nation to be self sufficient.<p>Is US a democracy? I am not so sure. Without fair competition, we aren&#x27;t a capitalist society either.

There is a serious problem with understanding surpluses here.<p>Do you really care if your monthly water bill is $1 or $5?<p>Think - if you&#x27;re at $5 a month, I mean you could save 500% (!!) by going to another provider at $1!<p>No - you don&#x27;t care at all. At such a low price and vast surplus (the difference between what you pay, and what it&#x27;s worth to you) - other considerations are paramount.<p>The difference between 10 cents and 2 cents is stupid. They could be 50 cents and it would not be &#x27;price gouging&#x27; because there&#x27;s tons of surplus to go around.<p>If we&#x27;re going to talk about &#x27;gouging&#x27; we need to talk about the <i>entire medical system</i> - it&#x27;s just one big massive gouge.<p>There basically needs to be a strategy of price regulation and sourcing, as simple as that.<p>A simple rule like &#x27;must be bought and fully sourced in the US&#x27; is easy, because it still implies a lot of competition.<p>For some products there could be a strategic reserve, and also a strategic production capacity.<p>Same for the entire military supply chain.<p>It&#x27;s time to re-think globalism.

Here in Hong Kong, folks have set up six mask production lines already, working round the clock to produce surgical masks. Don&#x27;t know how they managed to get the equipment but kudos to them.<p>That&#x27;s because people don&#x27;t hate businesses and businesspeople, and are thankful for their effort.<p>Low-quality surgical masks here retail for 40-50 USD per box (50pcs), and there are no plans to introduce any price controls. That means that resourceful people are stimulated to abandon their family and regular jobs, and work round the clock to set up production lines, because they want to earn money.<p>I assume in America the sentiment towards businesspeople and pricing is somewhat different.

Article isn’t available outside of the US. I assume it’s about how everything is the greatest, and they’re working 30&#x2F;8, not 24&#x2F;7?

Why can&#x27;t N95 mask production be completely automated so production can quickly scale with demand while also keeping costs down?

Something about this story doesn’t add up. If this were 99% of the manufacturers I know, they would be operating 24&#x2F;7 right now. Call every available temp agency and load that place up. The only fathomable excuse is if they can’t get enough material. The guy running this company sounds like a politician not a businessman. Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted. I’m serious. If this company were near me I would be asking if I could run second shift. In theory this guy is both leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table per day and contributing to our country’s deficiency of equipment while trying to argue for some sort of long term agreement because he has leverage at the moment.

I don’t really get this article.<p>If you have the foresight, and money, to pay to transplant an entire industry from a place which manufacture masks for 2 cents as opposed to one that does it for 10 cents, wouldn’t it be a lot easier, cost efficient, and sensible, to simply by 2 masks whenever you need one for a total of 4 cents for the 2 masks, and keep 1 of those 2 masks in your stockpile?<p>You end up spending about 4cents per mask, and you’ve built up a massive stockpile in addition to that for emergency situations. And you’ve only paid 20% of the money you would have for the masks the article is advocating.<p>Frankly, this was a disaster in federal planning. Trying to twist this into some sort of issue with the supply chain system is kind of ridiculous.<p>Also, if you actually look at the US right now, the idea that American companies would be manufacturing anything full throttle is beyond ridiculous. China in fact manaaged to completely lockdown Hubei province in a way the US can never dream of, which allowed them to continue their industrial manufacturing, and actually be able to supply masks to states and hospitals around the country (of course, life would be a lot easier if the federal government coordinated the procurement so states weren’t outbidding each other only to have the Federal government pirate their supplies to ha d off to private entities that then resell it to the same states for even more...).

Another way to frame the situation: America is in dire need of surgical masks, and its top manufacturer is more interested in martyring themselves than to help out.<p>It seems like this is what the Defense Production Act is for? It&#x27;s not like GM, where invoking the act doesn&#x27;t seem to speed anything along because they don&#x27;t make ventilators normally, and have to spend several days retooling their factories. In this case, you have a manufacturer that has excess capacity and is simply refusing to use it.<p>Also, how is this supposed to make people trust American manufacturers any more than the Chinese? The Chinese are actually _making_ masks at full capacity and exporting them... meanwhile, our own homegrown industries are busy navel-gazing and feeling bitter about some past slights.

Sad story, but if he had kept the employees and built a stockpile at a loss, he&#x27;d quickly recover those past losses and score a huge profit now. So: believe in your product and mission, pandemics do happen.<p>A solution for the future would be be high import taxes for products of &quot;national interest&quot;.