Wow. Seems like the easiest and simplest step imaginable for the CDC or some other federal department to step in and give a large minimum volume commitment immediately, and put this particular fear to rest...
This is a US Federal government-scale public utility problem space. Hand the US factory-based US PPE companies a 35-year contract rolled over once a year. They are to build out capacity in several separate facilities for up to 10% of US population per day, paid entirely by federal taxpayer funds. Train skeleton DOD and DHHS staff on how to maintain and run it, keep key personnel in primary facility on alternating shifts with federal equivalents. Run skeleton output for DoD and social welfare-related consumption. Improvements in primary facility are simultaneously performed in national strategic facilities. Company keeps manufacturing on a JIT basis as they are market-forced to today.
Develop standards and protocols to store the PPE for 30 year durations, and intermixing with normal supplies to keep rotating them. Ideally design some kind of factory-reusable retort pouch, and make the PPE reusable with sufficient treatment, and easy-to-use validation testing. Normally let the factory reman the used-once gear to identify and fix field problems. Set a stockpile goal that gives the strategic factories time to spin up in enough time to fluidly cover a pandemic response.
Then turn around and start contact tracing the JIT decisions, and tell them they have 10 years to clean up their act and lay in stockpiles and best practices. Hold natural persons responsible.
I’m guessing some kind of plan like this is languishing in the now-disbanded CDC pandemic response leadership. Extreme risk planning has been a marked oversight of American-style business leadership, and I see no incentive nor reason it will ever change.