How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of Face Masks | Hacker News Reader

How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of Face Masks

nytimes.com

90 pointsardy42174 comments

framing the US as the world's "richest country" is a disservice here.

a few people are very rich, and many people are well off. but the institutions of this country are, despite being the product of the "richest country", entirely poor and weak.

public institutions have been hollowed out by decades of intentional neglect and austerity. the CDC has no help to offer hospitals in need and is still like a deer in headlights, months into the crisis. before their weakness was exposed, the national stockpile was mostly empty. the cracks in the system were never filled, and many were barely papered over.

private institutions have been optimized to extract profits rather than to serve their stated social purpose. hospitals are now on the brink of going out of business and closing down as the pandemic starts to ramp up. their readiness was low beforehand, too, as there's no money to be made in being prepared for a public health emergency.

so, how did the world's richest country run out of face masks? easy: we organized our society around the idea that buying them and keeping them around was too expensive to bother with.

I've been thinking along the same lines, that our lack of public preparedness for this is reflected in concentration of returns to capital at the top of the wealth distribution.

But that said, there are things the US stockpiles: corn, petroleum, and weapons.

We over index on preparedness for war. Bill gates has a great ted talk on this who basically called this corona virus situation a few years ago. https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re...

When I look at the whole situation it looks like a bunch of meatheads whose answer to everything is brawn and military superiority.

And like most things in America, the military costs much more than other countries and does much less for its citizens. A good example is what happened when Yemen fell apart: China used its military to evacuate Chinese citizens[1], India used its military to evacuate its citizens[2], and the US told its citizens that they were on their own[3]. The American embassy even told Americans trapped in Yemen that they should seek out the help of India in order to get out of the country[4]. It's hard to escape the notion that for decades America has suffered under a political class that's been a mix of incompetent, self-serving, and uncaring.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32173811 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat [3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/21/washington-to-americans... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/08...

I've read that same thing about the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Other countries worked hard to help their citizens and get them out. The US just abandoned theirs.

> When I look at the whole situation it looks like a bunch of meatheads whose answer to everything is brawn and military superiority.

I'm not overly familiar with how the US medical system works at a detail level, but is it illegal for individual hospitals, clinics, dental offices, etc to independently stockpile critical supplies?

No, but hospitals are mostly for profit in the US so they don't. They run lean so as to make the best return on investment. That's also why we have as few hospital beds as we do. Most US hospitals used to be non-profit. When they were converted to for profit institutions there was a concerted decades long effort to reduce hospital stays and the beds that requires. Completely understandable given the need to make as much money as possible.

This points to an obvious bit of legislation that we need in the US: require hospitals to keep minimum stockpiles of pandemic response supplies, just like banks have minimum financial reserve requirements.

Given that there's an accute shortage of hospitals serving rural areas, regulation of that nature better be accompanied by federal funding for that work.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some serious DHS money redirected to hospitals, after this is all over. They could certainly put it to better use than police departments.

Alternatively, you could assign maintaining the mask inventory to admin staff. I know they often don't have advanced degrees, but I can't imagine they'd do a worse job of it. Actually, they'd probably take the job a lot more seriously than the "experts" who are in charge currently.

Assigning such tasks to a central body seems like an extremely fragile design, and as evidence for this assertion, I offer the current state of reality. I find it a rather convincing argument, but then I'm probably quite biased.

Yes, this seems like the obvious explanation to me as well.

My question was regarding the other poster's proposed explanation: "When I look at the whole situation it looks like a bunch of meatheads whose answer to everything is brawn and military superiority."

Simple profit maximization seems like a much better fit to me.

I suspect if we were to sit down and do an actually proper post-mortem on this debacle, it would mostly reveal a giant pile of simple explanations like this. I doubt this situation is nearly as complicated or conspiratorial as most people are making it out to be. Rather, it is simply optimizing for a particular variable, and if people aren't smart enough to realize that other variables are going to suffer correspondingly, and this low quality of thinking becomes prevalent enough that it becomes a literal existential threat, then I think it's about time the citizens of planet Earth put down their weapons for 2 or 3 months, and had a serious conversation.

I believe that if people continue to communicate in literal untruths, often knowingly, it will not be long until our demise as a species. Covid-19 feels to me like a warning from a different dimension. Whether this is literally true, if conceptualizing it in this way helps people to actually fucking think for a change, I say let's roll with it, or whatever other weird psychological sleights of hand get the job done. And I suggest we do it fast, because if we continue on this same downward trajectory (with increasing speed), it may not even take an anomalous event like this for us to wipe ourselves out.

I think we need some new ideas. I feel like we have to form a new internet community of some kind, not unlike what we have now (reddit, the software itself with a few minor feature additions & subtractions, would be more than sufficient). The main change, the change that I believe would make the difference, would be extremely strict new guidelines around acceptable behavior, that are enforced with extreme prejudice.

I actually believe there is one single rule that could fix the overwhelming majority of these problems, and here it is:

> RULE #1: It is completely forbidden to say things that are not true. Ever. Violations of this rule will result in increasingly severe punishments, ultimately resulting in a permanent ban.

Read that sentence, and be careful your mind doesn't start automatically generating ideas that prove it "impossible" (this word, like so many others, no longer has a common shared definition) - if it does, just make it stop and return to reading the sentence. Try to bring a sense of peace into your mind, it is likely not going to like that so it will be a struggle, but hang in there. Try to contemplate what is truly being said here, truly consider if "only say things that are true" is really such a ridiculously high goal, at least for us to aim towards.

Is this not very similar (but more stringent) to what our parents taught us when we were growing up? Is truthfulness too much for us to even try for at this point in humanity's evolution? If I am the only one that sees this as an attainable, righteous, and pragmatically useful goal, then I'm not really sure if I want to be here any more. I feel like I don't have anything in common with anyone. I don't like what Earth is becoming. I feel like an alien here, like I am of a different kind of some sort, like I don't belong here, like I have somehow wound up in the incorrect dimension.

Can no one else see what I'm talking about? Have I completely lost the plot? Someone has to do something. I wish someone would at least try. I wish someone could at least even admit that there's a problem. If we can't even agree that there's a problem, and roughly what the nature of that problem is, or even agree that this is something worth looking into, I feel like we should just wrap this whole thing up, because our days are numbered anyways.

The dust hasn't settled on this yet, but it appears that countries that are in a siege military footing (S. Korea, Israel, Cuba, Taiwan) have done better in controlling this situation because they have strong universal health systems and institutions coupled with mentality of constant preparation for a military siege. The culture of real preparedness is present throughout those countries' institutions, military or not.

This was discussed by Max Brooks on Fresh Air yesterday:

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/24/820601571/all-of-this-panic-c...

What Brooks doesn't discuss is the extent to which those countries have varying degrees of authoritarianism or the tendency for citizens to voluntarily comply with public orders.

In the US however, our military stockpiling is geared toward propping up defense industries. This has value to a point, but only when its objectives are actually defense preparedness, but not when the objectives are profit maximization.

The military is no substitute for having properly resourced and coordinated national institutions to deal with huge public health issues.

The difference with those four countries is that they expect fighting a war on their own soil to be a future possibility. When's the last time Americans actually saw what war on their doorstep looks like? The civil war? America's real defense is the Pacific and Atlantic. The US military is a raiding force that's free to attack anywhere in the world without fear of retaliation because they know the American continent is geographically unassailable.

> they know the American continent is geographically unassailable.

And COVID19 is turning that assumption on its head. The only question that remains is whether the US can buttress what's left of its public health institutions to keep it at bay, and prepare for the next wave that comes, whether of this pandemic or the next one.

I don't remember a H1N1, SARS, or MERS outbreak in the US.

Borders are absolutely a defense, they're just not an absolute defense.

That SARS-CoV-2 was able to spread globally as a pandemic has more to do with its transmissibility and latency characteristics.

> That SARS-CoV-2 was able to spread globally as a pandemic has more to do with its transmissibility and latency characteristics.

Which is what proves that the US isn't unassailable from a pandemic. It would be a mistake to assume that SARS-CoV-2 or something with similar ability to breach geographical barriers won't occur again. Also, nature doesn't care about political entities, and a pandemic could also start in the US.

It isn't, but it would generally be a waste of resources to overprepare for something that has a low probability of happening. In the same way it would be to fortify both coasts.

Budgeting is a zero sum game.

Stockpiles of essential PPE, sure. Pervasive monitoring for early detection? Not worth it.

they know the American continent is geographically unassailable.

That's 'magical thinking'.

No doubt the Japanese thought pretty much the same in 1942. That's why the Dolittle Bombing Raid on Tokyo was such a shock to their systems.

The Doolittle Raid was military insignificant, and in no way should have altered Japan's belief that their home islands were geographically unassailable.

Even in 1945, with the Imperial Japanese Navy suppressed or destroyed and their supply chain in tatters, an invasion would have been incredibly costly.

Occupying enemy territory, across an ocean, with a large population of civilians disinclined to cooperate, is never easy.

Consumerism is how they define rich here. The idea thst you have access to more good and services (to buy) than your grandparents did is how this is the best country in the world. It’s a none sense argument and this crisis has just totally exposed it. We have a bunch of old career politicians running decrepit institutions chief of whom comes up with worse ideas every week than he did the prior week. This weeks special: use religious symbolism of Easter to inspire the masses to support his idea of resurrecting the economy. The sad irony here is that the people who help elect this clown and his posse are likely the ones that will be impacted most by this crises. In a weird way it’s fitting - as they say you deserve the politicians you get. And in this case you is the subset of all voters whose votes mattered (swing states) and their electoral vote resulted the people we have today.

> In a weird way it’s fitting - as they say you deserve the politicians you get.

Or, you get the politicians you were served by one of the two major parties. Almost all of whom are bought by special interests.

> private institutions have been optimized to extract profits

Where are the private institutions trying to extract profit from selling facemasks. I cannot find one at any price.

The private company outsourced production last year to extract more profit.

They're not allowed to operate. In a more free market, masks would be available but at a higher price. Here's a shop that was required to stop selling masks because its price was too high: https://www.macombdaily.com/news/local/warren-company-accuse...

They could change it to "richest countries", because the US isn't the only rich country that screwed up. Look at Austria and Switzerland and their reliance on importing masks from other countries. Or at the Netherlands, which can actually produce large quantities of masks for domestic use but didn't because the government was too busy downplaying the epidemic.

Yeah. I feel like the U.S. is always in the spotlight for criticism, but there are an awful lot of mistakes to go around. People just don't handle crises well.

Those countries have implemented emergency legislation that makes up for employee pay and institutes a bunch of emergency measures that will make the countries come out the crisis rapidly and more robustly.

I think the odds are about 2 to 3 that the wealthy and connected in the US use the pandemic as an excuse to use free money to wholesale loot everyone else.

Agreed. Per capita they are not the richest, whatever their figures say. Much of usd health spending is just numbers on paper, they don't have the resources.

I don't think it is a disservice, and it's not just a "few" or "many" who are relatively well off.

The US has one of the highest median incomes in the world, and no one with higher is even a tenth as populous.

It's perfectly fair to call us the richest country. That we don't have institutions to match is a shame all the more because of our richness. We had/have the resources. We foolishly didn't use them.

The USA is something like 6th in median income adjusted for PPP. If you adjust for how many hours worked to get those wages, it would fall a lot more - 20th? Lower? If you adjusted for public services available it would be lower than that.

Not the worst, but definitely not the richest, not for most people. It's an astonishingly poor showing considering how much money is available to the USA overall.

Unfortunately this article doesn't get at any actual "why". The author blames just-in-time supply chains, but for me the crucial part is:

> In 2006, Congress approved funds to add protective gear to a national strategic stockpile — among other things, the stockpile collected 52 million surgical face masks and 104 million N95 respirator masks. But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them. This month, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, testified that there are only about 40 million masks in the stockpile — around 1 percent of the projected national need.

Stockpiles are clearly the answer, since supply chains are always going to fail in certain scenarios.

So the real questions here are, why didn't Congress create a bigger stockpile and why didn't it ensure it was maintained?

I genuinely want an in-depth answer to this question.

Is this some kind of problem with democratic government? Or are other democracies managinging responsible stockpiles just fine? Is it something unique to American politics? Do Americans somehow hold their representatives less accountable? Is it more the fault of one party over another? Is it leaving responsibilities to Congress that ought to be delegated to an agency? Is there are ideological or cultural component here, or just plain lack of accountability and people not doing their jobs?

Seriously. It's important we have a real in-depth analysis on this. Not knee-jerk opiniated answers, but what actually happened.

>why didn't Congress create a bigger stockpile and why didn't it ensure it was maintained?

You'd have to interview the responsible people at the time, which I doubt is going to happen right now. But the obvious answer is "nobody thought it was worth the money to do that."

>Is it leaving responsibilities to Congress that ought to be delegated to an agency?

It is definitely not only this. Even if responsibility were delegated, Congress (House of Representatives) has to allocate the money and is also where tax legislation originates. So a responsible agency can still be starved of funds to actually operate.

Heck that is true even for executive-funded agencies like the CFPB, which the administration has tried to kill through zero funding, multiple times.

>Is there are ideological

I think this is vast majority of the problem. One party, without naming it, is basically only about two things: 1) tax cuts as a policy solution for all problems, and 2) thoughts and prayers when anything bad happens (mass shootings, etc.) and minimal willingness to enact any changes to stop it from happening again.

That same political party is jammed to the gills with an anti-science, anti-expert, anti-vaccine, anti-government, etc attitude and will likely continue failing to take steps to address incoming issues, until they are on our doorstep already manifesting problems -and at that time the cost of dealing with it will be far higher in lives and money than it could have been.

Just look at the chief executive, who wants the country "reopened by easter" despite all advice from medical experts. The ideology here is: lets sacrifice millions of people on the altar of the free market.

The Congress that approved the stockpile in 2006 was Republican.

The Congress which failed to renew the stockpile was Democratic.

The failure to renew the stockpile is likely a result of the 2008 global recession and funds being prioritized differently, and subsequent partisan governmental meltdown rather than political ideology.

  The Congress which failed to renew the stockpile was Democrat.

And even if the 2009 H1N1 mask consumption had not occurred, the pre-Pelosi mask stockpile would all be expired now anyway.

> I genuinely want an in-depth answer to this question.

Me too. Even some in-depth, evidence-based discussion would be an improvement over the current state of affairs.

Ok, let's think about this:

According to Google, Donald Trump was elected on January 20, 2017.

According to Google, Barack Obama was elected on January 20, 2009, which would imply he was the sitting President in 2009 (matching your reference above).

To me, this strongly implies that Barack Obama would have more influence over this specific policy than Donald Trump.

And yet, in all the reading I've done on this specific attribute of the crisis (and I've done a lot), there seems to be nearly unanimous consensus that it was Donald Trump's "firing" of the head of the pandemic response team that was(!) the(!) root cause of a lack of masks in stockpile. Full stop.

Now, there's no doubt at all in my mind that Trump has utterly botched this response, I would even confidently speculate that he may be the worst President in the history of the United States that could have been in charge during this crisis. But this isn't only what is being claimed - rather, something very specific is also being claimed, and assuming I haven't made any mistakes in my dates above, I simply am unable to see how that makes sense. Your quotation seems to completely contradict this claim.

What in tarnation is going on here? This situation feels surreal to me. Like, how is a person supposed to sort out fact from fiction in this information environment? I feel like I am unable to discern what is actually true.

> What in tarnation is going on here? This situation feels surreal to me. Like, how is a person supposed to sort out fact from fiction in this information environment? I feel like I am unable to discern what is actually true.

When Donald Trump complains about "fake news", this is what he's talking about. He's genuinely incompetent, but that doesn't stop the press from twisting things to make him look worse.

I think at this point it's fair to say that holding high expectations for Donald Trump is the sign of a true optimist, and I say this as a Trump supporter.

But I'm curious what excuse people here would use for behavior that is little better - if you can't beat 'em, join em? What's good for the goose is good for the gander?

Not quite up to my personal standards, but at least that would be a valid and defensible position to hold imho. But who among us has the integrity and humility to explicitly admit to this behavior? I've made many silly mistakes in my life, and said many things in the past, and surely I will continue to do so into the future. But at least I'm trying to speak truthfully, and will admit without hesitation (or so I would like to believe) when I have been caught red-handed spreading mistruths.

I suspect most people here aren't big believers in God, and that's ok, but I believe there remains great value at this point in humanity's evolution to contemplate ideas from a frame of mind as if there was a (not "the") God. Done correctly, with sincere discipline, I believe one can bring significant psychological force to bear on one's mind, to put one's mind into a state where one may not be completely "free" from one's preconceived notions, biases, faith-based axioms (how many people are unaware that we all have them, even atheists), etc, but "free enough" to start to begin seeing reality more so for what it is.

Anyone who has studied Buddhism or related fields (psychology, neurology, etc) is well aware of the tricks one's mind can get up to. I rarely see resistance to these general ideas, even among non-practitioners.

But then close that tab and move to another one, where the topic of discussion is not directly about Buddhism or psychology, where people are no longer discussing these notions at the abstract level, but grappling with them first hand at the object level. I believe this is a fitting analogy (at least): those who have tried meditation are well aware how despite one focusing 100% of your conscious energy on one point of focus (typically one's breath), how long does it take before your mind is off on some sort of a wild goose chase? 60 seconds? 30? 10?

Now, in light of this fact, contemplate the nature of human thought (conceptualization of reality) and communication, processes several orders of magnitude more complicated than focusing on your breath (which most people are practically helpless with) - should we be surprised if occasionally our brain produces output whose accuracy or logic is less than perfect? And that's even when trying one's very hardest (see: bugs in code, making careless and hurtful remarks to friends or strangers, framing things so as to avoid something unpleasant "just this once"). Now imagine if you're not even trying to be disciplined, or correct, or honest, but rather "just kinda winging it". Going with the flow. Conforming to the the cultural norms (aka: "getting along" with others - "no rocking of the boat, please").

Man has grappled with (and written extensively on) such problems for as far back as we have records. But it almost seems like we've now broadly adopted the belief that we can now put the trivial ideas of ancient mankind behind us, relegate them to the trash bin of history with all the other "objectively incorrect" beliefs of yore. Who needs Gods and other such silly ways of thinking about the world, when we have become so powerful that we are nearing the realm of Gods ourselves?

Maybe. Maybe this is all correct. "Maybe it's me that's wrong." Maybe there is no wisdom or lessons from the past that have practical utility going forward. Maybe we really have become Gods.

Maybe. Or maybe not. I have a feeling we shall find out before my number is called.

Proof reading all this, and what a gigantic crock of delusional "woo woo" shit this is. The rantings of an obvious delusional schizophrenic. Move along, nothing to see here. And best make haste, there's a good chance this nut job might be dangerous.

Maybe I just need to sit on the couch for the rest of the day and immerse myself in some sitcoms and sports, maybe a little porn to add some spice. And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and then maybe all these silly ideas will just go away, and I can get back to dreaming about important things like that new car I had my eye on a while back. Maybe.

From January 2007 - January 2011, both houses of Congress were also controlled by Obama's party.

I thought this was about Switzerland... Just an opinion on a country that usually is ahead of others in smart decisions - they have almost 0 medical manufacturing here, and in past weeks were/are progressively getting screwed by ie Germany stopping trucks full of face masks and medical equipment at the border and forbidding them to come here. Outsourcing is not an issue only in US.

Also, people in government responsible for raising alerts, closures etc. voted 2:1 to not do quarantine when Italy was already exploding with cases (mind you, regions super close to Suisse!). Why? Effin' economical concerns, meaning businesses stronghanding (probably corrupt) politicians to keep things running. So while people were already dying en masse 50km south from here, all the shops, restaurants and caffees were chock full of common folks were acting like nothing is going on. Somebody didn't realize that it will take much longer to get economy back afterwards...

Hospitals desperately unprepared with equipment. Doctors working with plain stupid paper/cloth masks on emergencies, not having them swapped often. Leaving schools open for way too long. I could go on... I expected more from this country. I really did. Quick removal of any workers protection laws for doctors.

I personally know few doctors that are already sick with Covid here, mainly because system fucked them hard with lack of equipment, and they are properly disappointed, desperate and furious.

So don't be harsh on US government, I think basically almost all governments screwed up badly.

This is the part that annoys me. Most people would agree that this particular virus presents a threat that should be addressed in a way that bypassed day to day considerations.

But that is not the case. In US, the president openly says if it hurts economy too bad, we might as well roll the dice and see what happens. Very annoying given that the advice is likely coming from people who can cloister themselves if needed.

Why does everything has to be calculated in terms of the dollar? Hell, a month ago poster here was advocating killong off bat a species to save 2T in imaginary assets.

It feels like I am going on a rant here, so I apologize. The past few days have been bananas.

hang in there friend, we are all in this Together.

> they have almost 0 medical manufacturing here

Well, that must be a very big zero. Have you ever heard of companies like Roche, Tecan, Hamilton or Ypsomed (just to name a few)?

Yeah, do your due diligence. All there is here are HQs with upper management, just enough to tax corporations here, and often some research. Manufacturing - almost zero, zilch, none. And if there is something, it can't manufacture anything without all parts supplied from outside (cheaper) countries.

Of-topic a bit, but you know that 'swiss' army knives (victorinox, wenger) are manufactured piece by piece in Germany/Austria, and only final assembly is done en Suisse? Just enough work to pass the criteria to get the stamp 'swiss made', not a nanometer more.

I understand it from cold corporate logic, it really minimizes the costs and they ask for premium price nevertheless due to that swiss tag. But as we see now, this approach hits the wall hard in certain, very real scenarios. At least they kept the milk industry with long term subsidies afloat.

Go talk to Swiss doctors if you care, ideally in cantonal hospitals that will take most of the sick. Most of our friends are doctors in the biggest one in whole country, quite a few in emergencies. You will hear stories...

None of the stuff I mention is in mainstream media, all act like all is under control from day 0. Talk about independent journalism.

Well, I am Swiss and I consult some of the mentioned companies. These companies do most of their F&E in Switzerland and also some manufacturing. It's in no way just management. And Victorinox does manufacturing in Ibach and it's one of the most popular employers in Europe.

All screw up, but some screw up more persistently then others. What it clearly demoinstrates is that our socio-economic systems of choice clearly do not incentivize providing proper care for the people it is meant to serve.

Some still act as if this was an unforeseen event. All of this was predicted years ago after the previous SARS outbreak and well documented by the scientific community, yet governments worldwide turned a blind eye.

My own 'health' minister even went as far as destroying the strategic stockpile of FFP2 masks (yes, actually destroyed as they went over their 'best used before' , not that that turns them useless overnight) then aggressively 'saved' on all social and healthcare programs and decided not to refill the strategic stockpile.

Her latest blunder: panic ordering a contingent of masks from some dodgy north-African dealer without doing any due diligence, and of course in the process not only getting conned out of 3.5 million euros, but having hospital staff waiting another week on adequate protection. It boggles the mind.

Maybe I didn't express myself properly at the end - I meant be pissed off, I sure as hell am, but these massive failures that will cost many lives can be found everywhere. I really did expect more, not strictly from politicians (they should just listen when SHTF), but many 'experts' with influential roles in government.

In strictly just society, those with powers for this situation should be judged afterwards for their effectiveness, or lack of it. I wonder if we will see this in some form somewhere

If you look at entire known Human history, pandemics, epidemics, wars, famines, droughts and troubled economic times feature throughout and have occurred in all parts of the World. Besides economic strife and war, things are not always in the hands of Human (e.g. natural disasters).

What Countries around the World need to do going forward is to have a basic level of economic self-reliance. Things like face mask, clothing, basic medical equipment, basic things like plastic cutlery, etc. should be made in all countries of the World and import of such items should be strictly forbidden.

Only then can each Country have semblance of hope when disaster such as COVID-19 strikes.

I don't know, maybe I am rambling but I feel all countries from Afghanistan to United States to South Sudan to Zimbabwe need to enabled and forced to produce necessities of life and such basic items instead of relying on China, Germany, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

We don't need hard and fast rules about supply chains, we need to include resiliency in more of our planning. That might lead to certain choices about supply chains, but the point is that it should be an outcome of thought and planning.

Back in February I ordered a few boxes of 3M masks from a distributor in US because the US was the only country with no mask export laws yet.

Nice foresight! Hopefully you have enough for you and yours and perhaps can donate to local institutions that could benefit too

I ended up using one box of the three cartons I ordered so I donated the rest to the churches and Hospitals!

Does everyone here have a NYTimes subscription or is there a way to read this article without one?

http://archive.vn/oUJ6Z

I haven’t had any trouble reading NYT articles about coronavirus, I don’t think there’s a paywall. Otherwise, archive.is will give you a free copy

The NYT has lifted the paywall for all COVID-19 related articles. You need to log in or create a free account, but you don't need a subscription.

Disabling JS also works.

I got a login wall, but Safari's Reader Mode gave me the whole article without needing to create a login.

Allocation of resources is always a political decision. There are multiple things governments all over the world stockpile in ranging from weapons, oil, maple syrup and even medical equipment. The electorate votes them in. Clearly the priorities of the electorate can change over crisis and a new set of values can be ushered in or forgotten quickly.

My favorite is when the French health minister Roselyne Bachelot sold stockpiled medical supplies in France in 2010 and there was no political cost to it from the electorate:

https://www.france24.com/en/20100103-france-sell-off-million...

The most important question is will the US learn from it's mistakes and actually improve it's preparedness and healthcare and public services, or will everything be re-built brick for brick in the same way the serves the rich and keeps the poor down?

All this article highlights is that when you don't order more, you run out. This is not political, it's simply a mismanagement of inventory, and not being prepared for a disaster where multitudes of an item will be needed.

I read a Facebook post this week that I hope is true. A nurse was complaining that respirator maintenance meant periodic visits to each room, which required a new mask as each room was entered.

The nurse suggested to management that the respirator tubes be lengthened, allowing the machines to be put in the hallway. Then each maintenance cycle required only one mask!

Not sure if it was true, but even if it wasn't it showed good thinking.

Would that work?

A longer tube would mean a lot more air needs to be moved to raise and lower the pressure.

It seems to me that the main reason we are running out is that doctors have a lot of patients and use a new mask each and every time they move to a new patient. I'm not sure that's all that helpful (but it definitely could be absolutely necessary), and it seems quite wasteful.

I think at this point it's clear that the United States is also the most self-hating country in the world. Our media harps on the exact same pseudo-controversies that Russian trolls use as wedge issues, primarily because people online tend to swallow anything anti-american whole, particularly given the current state of politics.

And this article starts strong with partisan fuckery. It blames Trump:

>President Trump, bizarrely, has so far resisted ordering companies to produce more supplies and equipment

It when the source is clicked it mentions Trump is resisting signing an executive order. Apparently people are upset that Trump isn't acting like a king. But the article takes its swipe and most people won't click the link. The problem is elsewhere in the article. Quite simply it's globalism. If we had local production we could ramp it up just in time. But people let their partisan idiocy get in the way of rational decision making and right now antiglobalism not with the range of socially acceptable discourse... But don't worry, Coronavirus is about to push the political pendulum right.

The U.S. seems to have dropped the ball on testing. That's really the only mistake that seems likely to matter that anyone might have conceivably not made.

Global supply chains are a fact of life. The strongest fighter against over-dependence on China is Trump, and he was ridiculed as "protectionist". Trump's travel restrictions were similarly ridiculed.

Strategic stockpiles are spotty. Sometimes the thing you stockpile is what you need; often not. Did every other country have a stockpile of masks except the US?

>That's really the only mistake that seems likely to matter that anyone might have conceivably not made.

How about reacting 6-8 weeks earlier, rather than wasting so many weeks of warnings in denial mode, calling it a hoax by rival politicians, downplaying and lying the whole time?

>Global supply chains are a fact of life.

And that clearly needs to be rethought because the dependencies introduced can cause a global economic meltdown. As evidence I introduce: the current situation.

>Strategic stockpiles are spotty.

Doesn't matter since you can't run a country like you run a business. For one, when a business is trouble it throw out all free-market ideology and immediately cries for government for help. The government doesn't have that option.

The US is willing to spend $700 billion a year on the military, yet this war is being fought by doctors, nurses, hospitals, grocery stores, delivery people, and truck drivers.

Sounds to me like devoting, I don't know, 1% of the military budget for future pandemics (just lump that in under nuclear/biological/chemical threats) would be a wise move. Having $8 billion of PPE around would be extremely handy right now.

This isn't about a comparison with other countries. It's about ways in which the US was unprepared. And yes, some other countries did have significant stockpiles of masks (compared to their annual use).

Also, global supply chains are not "a fact of life". They are the result of a distinct, easily identifiable set of policies, regulations, laws and decisions made by the US government and corporations over a period of less than half of my life. They have occured because people with power decided that they wanted them.

I believe you’re mixing apples and oranges. Trump opposes moving manufacturing to China in general. But, based on his actions he’s not a supporter of government disaster preparedness.

Also, the need for masks was predicted by the government. They just didn’t take action to replenish the stockpile when it needed to be. Let’s not argue “nobody could have foreseen”. They could and they did.

Modern supply chains are concentrated on pulling manufactured goods from far away where they can offload environmental costs on countries that don't care/are corrupt, wasting energy taking it halfway around the world, and then selling it in America.

They also don't warehouse anything. Everything we depend on really is about 30 days supply tops, and the goal of supply chain management is to get as close to perfect demand anticipation as possible, which is as little warehoused goods as possible.

So everything has a huge lead time.

The "economics" of it (at least for the next foreseeable earnings quarter) was pretty cut and dry on paper. Of course that economics is just for the bank accounts of the rich, and the environmental costs, lack of "production security", and other concerns that couldn't be quantified easily (and thus are culturally ignored in economics) were ignored.

What I find particularly galling is that we are on a solid fourth iteration of a possible pandemic that was reliant on ventilators and infection disease in general (SARS, MERS, H5N1, Covid-19), and the CDC and DOD should have had a turnkey plan to address covering shortfalls of critical medical equipment with whatever domestic manufacturing we have left.

Of course Trump has allegedly fired a lot of the old-timers, but even if those people are gone, the basics of the plan should be around, but clearly that doesn't exist.

Environmental and labor.

It's perplexed me how one can be pro union rights, pro globalization, pro human rights and not a nationalist, all at the same time.

"Treating people fairly is important, we can't offer jobs that don't protect people. Encourage spending to be for foreign goods not blanked by those protections."

It doesn't matter if the plans still exist, if the people who know where to find them are gone.

The incentive structure of market capitalism is not aligned with the interests of society or the welfare of individuals.

Richest country? What, by what metric?

By GDP. I don't think there's any debate there.

It's 23 Trillion dollars in debt

Seems you have an agenda, but I'll help you out.

"The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP)[a] as of Q1 2014."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Un...

> That’s where cheap, disposable face masks, eye protection, gloves and gowns come in.

The world appears to have entirely forgotten that there are re-usable facemasks which you just boil/steam in hot water to sterilize.

They were heavily used only a short time ago.

You would just need to have 1-2 per medical worker and you'd be fine.

The "disposable everything" attitude is coming to bite blind capitalism in the ass yet again.

It is Chernobyl of capitalism.. Sure.

All this article highlights is that you can't run the government as a business.

The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.

I ran Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for a very large Financial Institution.

I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."

A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN.

Yes, we all knew this could happen, but there was no way to predict when it would happen.

Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen.

Frankly running DR & BC wrecked my career at that firm because I was seen as Don Quixote, "Tilting at Windmills." I was assigned the job and did my best, assuming it was a stepping stone, and it was, but they expected me to just put on a show. Instead I took the job seriously, and it eroded their confidence in me, they expected that I should have recognized it as a fluff job, used only to get me exposure to the BOD, justifying the next step up in my career, instead I was "sent down" and had no choice but to leave.

Agreed. Was thinking how our Internet infrastructure has built in redundancy, chaos monkey for services, etc... Engineers understand that things can and will fail.

If we build the Internet like the "just in time" supply chain - we'd all be screwed.

What's also sad is that people could see in January that this would be a global issue. Domestic production should have ramped up - at least buy us more time, translating to more flattening of the curve, less deaths...

It's even bigger than that.

We should be looking at strategic sourcing, just like we do with oil. Not all manufacturing should be allowed offshore. The SEC evaluates mergers, as part of HomeLand Security we need offshoring evaluated.

If you want to move your rubber dog bone production offshore, or if an industry wants to move ALL rubber dog bone production offshore, go for it. Critical items like ventilators. NOPE. Or Computing equipment, NOPE. There needs to be a list.

> If you want to move your rubber dog bone production offshore, or if an industry wants to move ALL rubber dog bone production offshore, go for it. Critical items like ventilators. NOPE. Or Computing equipment, NOPE. There needs to be a list.

I think most people would agree with you, to some degree anyways.

So let's say we put you in charge as "dictator for a year" for the USA, and your first task is doing a completely policy rewrite on how offshoring of any kind is handled.

What methodology would you use to generate the list, with the goal being "optimizing for the well being of all Americans" (interpret that phrase to your liking)?

This list will be decried as excessive regulation, and we know which party will claim this. And in the name of profits and jobs, that list will get cut below the bare minimum once they have the votes to do so. It's not a majoritarian democracy, rather it's a system still biased toward landed elite, same as since the founding days, today these are corporations.

Not even one minute after a pandemic, they will restate their position as: the disaster just happened thus can be ignored as impossible to happen again in our next two lifetimes, do you want to be the one to cost jobs and profits with your wild speculation?! You are leaving money on the table with your fantasies!

I don't think that most, today, would see a requirement like dual sourcing + at least 50% domestic production for all medical equipment, devices and prescription medications would be excessive. It's about security and always has been.

For that matter, I think similar requirements for all communications equipment, and this would include computers, cell phones and mobile devices would not be out of line as well at this point. Most of this crap happened roughly a century ago, including collapsed markets more than once.

The above limitations as well as putting US banking closer to post-depression and canadian requirements would be a good idea as well.

I'm very libertarian leaning... that said, I'm pragmatic, there's definitely room for having restrictions in place in leiu of the limited liability given to corporations. It's supposed to be a trade-off, not a give away.

For the past decade or so, the Republicans have generally been the ones who've worried about America's industries being offshored to China and the Democrats have been the ones who've downplayed those concerns as xenophobic nationalism from people who're stuck in the 50s. I've no doubt there'll be an attempt to rewrite history on this, but insofar as this has been a partisan divide it's been the other way around.

It's nonsense to say Republicans worry about offshoring. They consistently oppose amendments and bills trying to stop it. They consistently support tax policies that incentivize it.

https://aflcio.org/2017/11/8/republicans-defeat-stop-outsour...

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/39628...

Republicans have been pro-global free trade for decades, until Donald Trump won the presidency on a protectionist platform. Republicans in Congress were opposed to Trump's tariffs before rolling over and at least not fighting him on them. But as most of their campaign contributions come from pro-global free trade and not domestic labor, they still consistently oppose amendments trying to reign in offshoring. Their "worry" is only that they'd get caught having a public message that's different than their actual votes on legislation.

The Democratic party, for decades, have been pro-labor and pro-union platform. And it's fair to say in the past decade they are split between moderate free trade and weak support of domestic labor and unions. This weakness no doubt cost them votes in 2016.

It's funny you mention that... part of why I'm a minimist in terms of what I want from govt. That said, corporate welfare combined with a lack of dual sourcing and domestic production requirements are frightening.

I think we definitely need to identify sectors, and specifically medical supplies, prescribed medications and prescribed medical devices should have dual sourcing requirements in addition to require at least 50% domestic production as requirements to sell in the US market.

I am amazed at how well the logistics in terms of groceries and supply chains has held up. I wouldn't say that just-in-time has failed, it's worked surprisingly well. That isn't to say that all things should work that way, only countering expectations vs. results.

That's what regulation is for. If the regulations "even the playing field" across the industry, then such planning isn't a cost that is actively reducing your competitive posture in the marketplace, although global markets make that really hard.

Of course regulation is a no-no to GOP libertarian UofChicago Ayn Rand cultists in charge of America.

Disasters, either at the personal level of home fires all the way up in scale to pandemics and civilization stuff really highlight how myopic libertarians are.

And they aren't even really against regulation. They are just against regulations that don't benefit them, while the vast majority won't protest regulations that benefit them.

> Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen.

How can a govt predict and stock up all the unforeseen events. Wouldn't there be an opportunity cost to for these preparations just like to a private institution. Govt also has limited set of resources, ppl would probably probably choose to fund better roads than prepare for once in a lifetime event. I cannot imagine any politician being able to sell idea of making huge investments for things that might never happen.

Govt also runs on the idea of "profit" , profit in terms on demonstrable results. Otherwise ppl get voted out.

Stockpiling medical supplies is a pimple on the US federal budget. Its a strawman to suggest its 'huge investments'.

Its a decision to make, and the US decided to 'go commando' to save a few bucks. Because it was politically expedient. Because the politicians are gambling with our lives to advance their careers. Instead of, you know, doing the right thing.

Foolish folks who blindly label everything "huge investments" are the issue here. Yes its maybe $100,000,000. A big number to the rank and file. But its 100 miles of road for instance. America has a million miles - which was deemed worthwhile.

Labelling every public health and safety issue as a 'waste of money' is the tragedy here. Its shortsighted and stupid.

> Stockpiling medical supplies is a pimple on the US federal budget.

We aren't just lacking medical supplies though. We also lack hospital capacity.

> . Its a strawman to suggest its 'huge investments'.

I was responding to parent comment that said "really bad things that might never happen."

Surely just medical supplies don't cover all bad things that might ever happen?

> you know, doing the right thing.

You mean ppl don't have suffiencnt information to judge if a politician is doing the right thing?

also, whats with all the name calling. Ok maybe its not "huge" investment, I don't know what the level of investment is to prepare for all things, but neither do you. "stupid people" vote too.

Sorry, isolation is making me owly.

hehe, me too. All good. cheers.

What's most likely to deprive other people of life at large scales: famine, disease, war, weather the biggest 4? Govt has plenty of contingency plans, but those three should be towards the top of the list.

Yup, I am surprised at the numebr of people here who think government should have stocked up on ventilators. Ventilators are not such a common requirement to defeat a virus. How do we know what virus will emerge next? COVID-19 needs a ventilator to mitigate side effects. But does it really make sense to stock up on hundreds of thousands of ventilators, when you only really need a few thousand in any given year? What if the next virus is an hemmorhagic fever, or something completely novel? How do you prepare reasonably and with finite resources for something we do not know? No one can answer these questions.

The fact is that if we had bought hundreds of thousands of ventilators and not enough fluid replacement (for Ebola for example) and Ebola was the pandemic, not COVID-19, then everyone would blame the government for preparing the wrong thing. How can anyone know?

We are not prepared for anything right now, though. We have literally closed the government agency focused on things like Ebola or COVID-19, and we lack even the stockpiles of general supplies we had in 2009.

To have prepared for the wrong thing would be unfortunate. To be prepared for nothing should be criminal.

> We have literally closed the government agency focused on things like Ebola or COVID-19, and we lack even the stockpiles of general supplies we had in 2009.

Can you please cite what you are talking about? Neither the CDC nor FDA are closed.

W.r.t the masks, I completely agree. This has been a decade's worth of failure. Why weren't the masks replaced in 2010? There should be an investigation for sure.

I don't have any links that don't read like partisan snipes, and I'm not trying to start a partisan squabble.

After Ebola, we established the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. In recent years, it was closed down.

Do you have insurance?

yes but it doesn't cover all unseen future events. Only a specific predefined set. Yours does?

> "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."

Well, whether they were right or not largely depends on what you prepared for and how you did it I assume. How does a bank prepare for a pandemic? Stockpile hand sanitizer and toilet paper?

> How does a bank prepare for a pandemic?

Mostly by business continuity planning. For example: Having a spare, idle, fully equipped trading room into which they can split off half of the traders and, by having more space, distance them better. Traders can't really do home office, after all.

Expensive? Sure, but much cheaper then having to cease trading due to a pandemie.

Banks are in the business of managing risks. And I can assure you that a hell of a lot of thought and planning goes into such events.

And a pandemie is actually an event, which is not that unlikely, that a serious, responsible risk planner wouldn't consider it.

We see that quite drastically right now.

The European bank actually has 2 data centers (Rome and Amsterdam) connected via 2 different intranets going through opposite sides of the Mediterranean and they switch the main DC every 6 months to know that the backup works at all times.

Since we are starting off with a partisan attack.

The reason we don’t have enough face masks is because we have moved all our medical supply chain to China. The reason we were able to do that is because during the Clinton administration we allowed US businesses to destroy US manufacturing capability by granting permanent normal trade relation with China.

I like how the liberal/Democrats always ignore China/offshoring during their discussion of economic crisis. (Probably because they benefited from the slave labors in China more)

But Russia is scarier!

This isn't it. It has nothing to do with China, these could have been made in the USA over the course of years, and stockpiled in some giant DR warehouse somewhere in the USA that the USG runs currently for weapons designed to wipe out cities.

The USG doesn't because it isn't a priority to the people in power.

Nope that’s not it. Do you see China running out of masks right now? No of course not. They have so much they are “donating” to other countries. They have the world’s capability to make masks.

Exactly, and the USA DOESNT because it chooses not to but can if it wishes, because money. You seem to be proving OP's point.

The U.S. is out of masks because the shelves were cleared in January and February by people buying for relatives back in China, and by local Chinese associations bulk buying and sending them there.

I have family in China. I watched this happen. I saw emails and chat posts organizing donations.

This is getting back to OP's point too, if the US government had actually prepared for this, there would be a stock of these types of items in a government DR warehouse somewhere not available to the public, but ready to be shipped around the USA when needed.

The thread's point is that the other way the US government could have prepared for this would have been to prevent the offshoring of mask production (and other national-security related items), thus keeping the necessary production capacity here instead of in China.

Offshoring isn't the issue, the issue is the GOP wanting to decimate all public health infrastructure and let companies step in and make money off of it instead. The capacity could be here if the USG wanted to make it a priority but it isn't a moneymaker so they are not.

The issue is that you either need a strategic stockpile OR domestic production capabilities, and ideally both. You seem to be ignoring the latter entirely.

(And it was Obama that depleted the strategic stockpile of N95 masks without replenishing them - a stockpile created by Republicans, mind. If you want to point fingers, please point them in the right direction)

They have been "donating" simply to get headlines so the American people complain until Trump apologizes for calling it a "Chinese virus", then China will agree to sell the US masks and price gouge the US. Trump apologized last night and wouldn't you know it, Beijing gave manufactures the go ahead to contact various State and City governments to start price wars internally.

You are correct, China has the capacity to manufacture and supply the masks, but they haven't because they are politicizing this and otherwise price gouging. What they don't realize what they are actually doing is lending legitimacy to the Chinese-made virus conspiracy theories by doing these things...this will back fire against China in a very big way.

> It has nothing to do with China, these could have been made in the USA over the course of years...

This seems not true to me. Indeed, they could have been manufactured in the USA, as could essentially anything, yet the majority of manufacturing happens to have migrated to China over the past 20 or so years. Does it not seem reasonable, or at least possible, that the much lower cost of production in China had something to do with them being manufactured over there?

Of course, but the point is that proper preparation/intervention from the government would have led to maintaining enough domestic manufacturing capacity and stockpiles. Businesses have different incentives and won't do the same.

> Of course, but the point is that proper preparation/intervention from the government...

Pardon me for being obsessive about accuracy, and I hope you don't take this in a disrespectful way, but the point (topic) of this particular sub-thread (the comment to which I'm replying, which I excerpted, in turn defining the topic) is not that.

It is this: "It has nothing to do with China, these could have been made in the USA over the course of years..."

The media redefining reality is one thing (perhaps they are just doing their best) - but doing it on HN, when the truth is a few centimeters above, seems like taking it a bit too far, to my style of thinking anyways.

Regardless of trade policy, the government should prepare for disasters.

>The GOP [...] racist, xenophobic [...]

It's pretty obvious that the wast majority of people in power right now are not very good at preparedness planning or rapid crisis response. This includes both parties. This also includes many state and local governments, not just feds.

People using this crisis to blame "the other side" and spout their usual talking points (now with even more hysteria) is getting really old, really fast.

Do you have any evidence to back up this "both sides" argument? The responses executed by each party are starkly different, and the results are in some cases are already measurable. To give just one exapmle:

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/10liste...

I think that you can blame both parties for the overall lack of preparedness, yes, we've had more proactive responses in crisis situations by Democrats - but we've seen several decades of bipartisan cuts to the CDC, and other disaster preparedness agencies for decades.

Terri Gross interviewed Max Brooks yesterday, an author and disaster preparedness expert

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/820601571

"MAX BROOKS: I think there are massive gaps in our systems that are being exposed right now, which - by the way - this is not news to the experts. Anybody who works in these fields could have told you years ago that we were vulnerable to this. It's going to rip through our prisons. It's going to rip through our homeless population. God willing it doesn't rip through our nursing homes.

But what no one is talking about, what terrifies me, what keeps me up at night are the secondary casualties that will occur because of hospital overflow. What I mean is we're only talking about now how many people are going to die if the coronavirus really rips through our country; what is not being talked about enough or what needs to be talked about are the people who are still going to die of cancer, of accidents, of other diseases because they simply can't get into the hospitals because the hospitals are choked with coronavirus patients.

GROSS: So that's a flaw in the system that you think is being revealed.

MAX BROOKS: That is a tremendous flaw in the system right now. And we used to be very good at this. I can tell you that one of the gut-wrenching moments I had years and years ago was during the homeland nuclear disaster scenario called Vibrant Response. And I spoke to someone from the Defense Logistics Agency. And what the DLA does is they're responsible for all the bottled water and bandages and everything that FEMA uses in a crisis - the military as well. They - if there's something out there that we need, that the government needs, they buy it.

What he told me was, up until the end of the Cold War, we had prepositioned stockpiles of emergency supplies all over the country, and that was in case we got nuked, so we could pull from these warehouses. Now, the peacetime dividend was, even though we never got nuked, we still had hurricanes and floods and other disasters, and there they were, ready to go. After the Cold War, somebody got the idea that this was inefficient, it was expensive - get rid of them and buy what you need on Day 1 of a crisis from the big box stores.

Here's the problem - the big box stores don't have warehouses, either, because they know it's inefficient. So these huge stores need to turn over their stock every 24 hours. So what if you have a crisis at the very moment that these stores are reshelving. And I witnessed that firsthand during Superstorm Sandy. We're watching TV here on the West Coast about what's happening to New York. And my wife says to me, you know what? We've always talked about getting a generator. What if we have an earthquake while this is happening? Go get it now. I got in the car. I go to Home Depot - generators gone. FEMA had taken them all.

So we don't have stockpiling anymore on a national level. We're seeing on TV the stockpiles of masks right now that the federal government is distributing; that is nothing compared to what we used to have.

GROSS: I'm even thinking about things that we're supposed to have at home to protect ourselves. Hand sanitizer - OK, local distilleries are starting to make that now. Things like Lysol or Clorox wipes, you can't find them anyplace, at least not as we record this. Vinyl gloves or rubber gloves, those are really hard to find, too. So we're being told to protect ourselves with supplies we can't get access to.

MAX BROOKS: No. And this is the problem, is in this country, we used to have these stockpiles, and it was called civil defense because we knew when the bombs were dropped and the cities were nuked, that we would need all of this, and it was all the lessons of World War II. So if this pandemic, let's say, happened in 1965, there would be no shortages; it would be ready to go. But post-Cold War, it's all become about the bottom line. And that trickles down to us, like you said, the individual citizens.

I see panic buying in LA and I'm shocked because how does everyone in Los Angeles not already have an earthquake kit? Which, by the way, the earthquake kit is supposed to be much more extensive than a pandemic kit because, at least in a pandemic, the lights are on and the water is running. In an earthquake, you're camping out. So why are my fellow Angelenos caught so desperately unprepared?"

'Bi-partisan' just means that both groups came to a compromise to get some of the things they want. You then have to look into how the bills and rules evolved to figure out how it came to be. My guess (non-researched) is that the party that has cutting government budgets as a priority was the one injecting a lessening of resources into the process.

Both major parties dramatically increase spending more often than they reduce it. Bureaucracy and waste are incentivized at every level given how budgeting works in practice. They both prop up corporate welfare and military expansion.

We are the only major country in the world that doesn't have a fist fight on their congressional floor now and then... to me, it just indicates that most don't mean what they say.

Exactly correct, consent and agreement aren't the same thing, PoliSci 101. The idea that one party consents to a policy (or lack thereof) promoted by another party, does not mean it is bipartisan approval of that policy. And in fact, a unified vote against a policy cannot be seen as being opposed to that policy.

Example of the latter is PPACA. That legislation came straight out of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and had substantial Republican agreement and modifications incorporated into it at the committee level by compromise. In every way how it was produced into a final product, on the record, it is bipartisan. And yet in the final vote, zero Republicans voted aye, in either house. That's politics. And they took advantage of this with plausible deniability for a decade, invariably claiming Democrats had jammed it down everyone's throats.

Further, effectively opposing policies depends on arguments being provable or convincing in relative real-time. A party needs to expend political capital when in opposition of a thing, and there is an opportunity cost: there's simply less ability to oppose or promote other policies.

Also in political science, the Republican vs Democrat distinction that always seems to rile up people on HN, using the "partisan" label as a smear to stop conversations, is not even that significant of a consideration. Ideology, expertise, personal interest, and individual campaign contributions are more predictive. There are parties within those parties. Most people have no idea to what degree actions are individually motivated or to what degree the party holds power over the individual politician.

According to the article, the stockpile of masks was depleted in 2009. Is that sufficient evidence that "both sides" had the opportunity to replenish the stockpile?

As for the decline of American manufacturing capability: the Trump administration is trying to address that problem, while the Democrats typically attack efforts to protect American manufacturing as racist and xenophobic.

The president from one party responded to a health crisis by establishing a pandemic response team and developing protocols.

The other party's president is trying to defund the relevant agencies and dissolve the teams, then turning around and tweeting that he didn't.

Refusing to make distinctions between the parties just muddies the waters. There are real differences in their approaches and ability to govern competently.

They both agree 90% of the time, and both massively grow and expand the size, scale and scope of government and prop up corporate incumbents.

Simply not true. There are over 400 pieces of legislation passed by the Democratic controlled House of Representatives, that are stalled by the Republican controlled Senate. It's 80% opposition right now.

> are not very good at preparedness planning or rapid crisis response

As far as I have seen they sold their stock pretty rapidly to me.

This Jedi Mind Trick didn't begin with modern day GOP: it goes back at least as far as Mrs Thatcher and Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan. Looking back, presumably what happened was the two wars led to adoption of more government intervention in society which was welcomed while the population still had a good memory of those crises. But over time memories faded.

This documentary is on that exact topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

---------------------------------------------

The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays.[1] In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed our perception of the mind and its workings. The documentary explores the various ways that governments and corporations have used Freud's theories. Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed in part one. His daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in part two. Wilhelm Reich, an opponent of Freud's theories, is discussed in part three.

Along these lines, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of consumerism and commodification and their implications. It also questions the modern way people see themselves, the attitudes to fashion, and superficiality.

The business and political worlds use psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, and to make their products and speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and voters. Curtis questions the intentions and origins of this relatively new approach to engaging the public.

Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a group, Stuart Ewen, a historian of public relations, argues that politicians now appeal to primitive impulses that have little bearing on issues outside the narrow self-interests of a consumer society.

The words of Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in 1927, are cited: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs."[7]

In part four the main subjects are Philip Gould, a political strategist, and Matthew Freud, a PR consultant and the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. In the 1990s, they were instrumental to bringing the Democratic Party in the US and New Labour in the United Kingdom back into power through use of the focus group, originally invented by psychoanalysts employed by US corporations to allow consumers to express their feelings and needs, just as patients do in psychotherapy.

Curtis ends by saying that, "Although we feel we are free, in reality, we—like the politicians—have become the slaves of our own desires," and compares Britain and America to 'Democracity', an exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair created by Edward Bernays.

---------------------------------------------

It "seems" like an outlandish thought, but if the claims Curtis makes in this documentary are even partially truthful, might it be that this psychological manipulation of the public is actually still going on, and might it then also explain some of the inexplicable human behavior we see all around us?

I mean...how the hell would a person even guess at what the long term (decades) effects might be of simultaneous, multi-vector psychological manipulation of people at massive scale? Just look through history at the atrocities that people have been persuaded to commit, motivated by a fundamental belief system that is inconsistent with actual reality? We know these things have happened in the past, is there a logical reason why something similar cannot be happening now? There is no shortage of people (some even here) who believe with absolute sincerity that a significant percentage of Trump supporters are hold beliefs extremely consistent with literal Nazis. Ok, fair enough. But if significant numbers of people can and do believe such obviously outlandish things as this, does it seem all that outlandish that something is causing large numbers of people to believe other things that are literally not true?

In a sense, the specific belief is largely irrelevant - to me, the fundamental question seems like something along that lines of:

> Is it technically possible (or at least plausible) to modify the beliefs of the general public via psychological means, using various communication vectors (distorted / ambiguous/ misleading news broadcasting, TV, talk shows, statistics, internet, radio, podcasts, forum "trolls" (not sure the word) or state of the art bots in internet forums, etc) - and if so, is this happening today, and if so, to what degree.

All things considered, this is one of the more logical explanations I can come up with. "People are just idiots" stopped being believable to me over a year ago. The magnitude of obvious mass delusion (in the literal sense of the word) is just too large. If "people are idiots" is the explanation, one then has to explain why so many people have simultaneously become so increasingly idiotic, and we're right back where we started.

But then, as depressing as that sounds, if this theory actually holds some legitimate truth, therein also lies the solution (partial, at least) to what currently ails society in this regard.

How is this attack on the GOP a rational response to the article?

From the article:

> But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them.

Would that not make this a bipartisan issue?

some clarifying questions worth asking:

- was there an attempt to replenish or was it forgotten?

- if there was, was funding made available or blocked?

i don't know the answers to these questions, but they are important to determine who should be held accountable.

The cache is overseen by the Department of Heath and Human Services. The Senate was not able to confirm a new secretary until January 29, 2018. By all accounts, this was in the wheelhouse of the DNC, and they chose to kick the can down the road.

You can read more about the Department's increasing budget here: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45820.pdf

It took two weeks but I found an answer. It seems to trace to budget cuts forced by the tea party:

https://www.propublica.org/article/us-emergency-medical-stoc...

Who's been in control of Congress since 2009? One side has perfected the art of obstruction to win votes from their deluded base.

I realize that your question is rhetorical, but I'm not sure the facts supports your point. Democrats controlled both the House and Senate from 2009-2011 and controlled the Senate all the way up through 2015. All the while controlling the Presidency as well.

Practically speaking, you need 60 votes to control the Senate. Barring that, the opposition party has great power to block legislation.

And yet Republicans controlled the White House, Senate, House, and the Courts from 2016-2018 and only managed to pass a $1 trillion taxpayer-funded giveaway to the largest corporations and a few rule changes to make it easier to dump toxic waste into drinking water.

I don't think the facts agree with your statement here. The left wing of the Senate blocked the confirmation of Secretary Azar until January 29, 2018. That leaves the Department in control of the DNC.

I do not think it is fair for you to call one base deluded. And I consider it highly ironic that you would use the phrase "art of obstruction" in this circumstance.

My point was that the GOP have been working really hard to make every part of the government as inefficient as possible so that everything can be turned over to private business.

The GOP has put the government and every possible group they can brand as "negative" on one side and the white, Christian, pro-life, straight people on the other side and has forced them to choose. It's not an attack, it's a fact and it's plain to see every day.

The Post office is just one example. In the early 1970s, Congress passed legislation that create a half-public half-corporate governing structure forcing it to operate as a business

In 2006, Congress required that the Postal Service pre-fund its health benefit obligations at least fifty years into the future, this rule has created over 90% of the Post Office's losses.

The GOP have been behind all the changes, you can argue that the Postal Service is wasteful and needs to be privatized unless it's losing money hand over first, so the GOP set it up so that's the case.

The only saving grace for the Post Office is that no private business would deliver any mail to the rural areas of the country, because a business could never justify the cost vs the pay back.

It's the same with Internet Service. My sister lives less than 90 miles from NYC and can't get anything other than satellite or dial up service.

This is often why individuals in DR/BC and security (a CISO for example) leave a company. They do their jobs and come up with recommendations and other steps that need to be taken to implement best practices in this area. When these recommendations and steps aren't taken they don't want to be the one taking the blame if something goes wrong, and rightly so, they leave. It is not uncommon for an organization to do "theater" that makes it look like all the best practices are being followed when in reality it's just a pretty checklist that doesn't actually follow the intent. The only way to know if an organization is taking DR/BC seriously is if they're willing to literally kill a server or other infrastructure element of high-importance and see how effective the roll over is. There are lots of horror stories about organizations that did DR/BC only to find that one or more critical elements of their process were so flawed that it was impossible to get back to operational.

This is all a byproduct of globalization, moving manufacturing overseas. I don't know why you have such a partisan view on this situation. Demonizing republican voters doesn't help anyone.

Blaming the "white man" for all the worlds ills is more racist than anything the GOP have legislated.

>All this article highlights is that you can't run the government as a business.

To me it seems even worse than that...they are running it like a bunch of wantrepreneurs without a business idea or model. In fact they are completely treating this like the goal is the funding (in this case bailout/stimulus) rather than looking at the real work to come to make a successful business after securing funding.

Not to mention they are hiding the fact the proposed $2T is actually $6T, and $4T is going to be taxpayer debt that is given to the Fed, so the Fed can loan it out to businesses that do everything in their power to avoid paying US taxes.

What is the point of record profits and markets, when the average worker can't handle an emergency $400 expense? Any company that touches any of this money should be mandated to pay all profits as taxes until such time as the national debt is paid in full.

"Running the government like a business" has always been a completely meaningless idea. Kevin Williamson does a better job of explaining this than I could, and I recommend you check out his essay:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/government-run-like-b...

A few highlights:

"Businesses measure their success in profit. Governments don’t. Businesses offer products and services in exchange for money in voluntary transactions. Governments don’t. Businesses that fail go bankrupt and are disbanded (except for politically sensitive banks, automobile companies, steel producers, farmers . . .) while failed governments keep right on misgoverning in the city and state of New York, in Illinois, in New Jersey, in California, in Connecticut, in the District of Columbia, in Austin, and abroad. Businesses have customers. Governments don’t. Those who profess their desire to “run government like a business” most often mean that they seek to achieve a higher degree of administrative excellence and bureaucratic accountability than Americans are used to seeing from their governments. But that isn’t running government like a business — that’s running government like . . . Swiss government."

"Americans do not care much for bureaucracy, to the extent that the word bureaucracy itself functions as a pejorative. But an excellent bureaucracy is a wonder to behold. It was a first-rate bureaucracy that put a man on the moon and brought him back safely. Dwight Eisenhower was one of the outstanding bureaucrats of his generation, a man who did a long and dreary apprenticeship as an administrative functionary before being anointed “supreme commander.” Bureaucracy matters in the business world, too: Administrative excellence and not technological innovation is what distinguishes Amazon from its would-be competitors, whereas dealing with your health-insurance company or your mobile-phone provider is in most cases a lot like a trip to the department of motor vehicles."

Thank you for this... stated much better than I ever could as well. I also find the corporate protectionist policies and spending combined with a lack of requirements for domestic production and sourcing are a pretty big problem, especially in certain sectors (medical supplies, etc).

Tired and illogical argument to make this political. To do so is all emotion driven and not logic cause fast forward a few decades later the globe is experiencing a mass shortage of X due to X calamity. A calamity no one could've predicted cause humans can't predict the future. But, wait the liberal loonies are smarter then the GOP Tards and the loonies would have stockpiled up on X cause they can see the future (right).

Political arguments = tired and again illogical!

It isn't emotion driven because it's an objective fact that the pandemic response team was disbanded by this adminstration. The same administration that wants to cut off food stamps and a bunch of other programs that are critical during times of crisis.

This was totally predictable. It was the fault of this adminstration on its horrible, science-denying management that it spun out of control to this degree.

Ok what about every other country who are now facing the same dire shortages? They were all run by similar GOP Tards or they are humans who cant predict the future?

Who says other countries are facing the exact same issues? Other countries have centralised response teams and have taken swift and decisive action.

The US's refusal to take up the advice of exports for the ego of its sociopathic president is something only seen in banana republics.

What are you talking about ... how is Italy, Spain, France holding up in this pandemic???

Are you going to blame the fool for their lack of not being able to predict the future too; not stockpile up on millions of the medical equipment/supplies we now know that is needed?

>The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.

It pains me to see something like this in a highly up-voted comment. The point about businesses never preparing for disaster is a good one, and one does not need to claim a party has scummy voters to make it. Adding such flamebait does not strengthen the point being made.

> It pains me to see something like this in a highly up-voted comment. The point about businesses never preparing for disaster is a good one, and one does not need to imply a party's voters are the scum of the earth to make it. Adding such flamebait does not strengthen the point being made.

HN, like the rest of the internet and greater overall world, is losing its grasp on reality. Considering the average quality and truthfulness of reporting and public discourse, I don't think one should really be all that surprised. I have pointed this out to @dang a few times but he seems to be unable to see what I am talking about.

I mean think about it guys - HN is overwhelming populated by tech folks, for whom disciplined, logical thinking is practically second nature due to decades of practice.

And yet...look at the actual content of people's comments. We are ~all smart and logical, yet if a hyper-intelligent alien with zero context was to observe this discussion, would they not come away thinking that human consciousness runs on some sort of weird reality that is not consistent for all people, despite reality itself being right in front of our eyes?

How is it possible that this is happening? What is going on here? This whole situation stopped making any sense to me a long time ago...am I the only one that feels like they may be literally going insane?

I think you are reading too much into his comment. You are taking it as saying X = Y when I think it was meant as X ⊂ Y, where X = "scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people" and Y = GOP voters.

We are in effect a two party system, at least for national offices and major state offices. Someone who falls under "scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people" has a choice: Democrat or Republican.

They probably dislike many things in the platform of both parties, but they almost certainly find far more they dislike in the Democrat platform than the Republican one. Hence, they tend to vote GOP if they vote.

The point that is valuable to the discussion is this: businesses don't worry about disaster preparedness, so the responsibility falls on government, and government run like a business won't prepare either.

Which party racists vote for doesn't improve a discussion about governments buying medical supplies.

>scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic

How are you oblivious to this blatant racism? Is there no cognitive dissonance in your head? Have you really accepted now that casual anti-white racism is totally fine?

Do you wonder why white nationalism is on the rise? What do you expect people to do when singling out white people as you're doing is totally socially acceptable now?

And your entire premise is bullshit. You can run a business to do anything, so long as the people in charge set appropriate goals - i.e. don't hire MBAs to optimize for quarterly profits.

The fact that this post hasn't been flagged is testament to the unbelievable self hatred of the left leaning white internet. Imagine if we replaced "white, Christian, racist, xenophobic" with an attack on any other race. You're also a fool if you think racism is limited to white people. Poor minorities are far worse on average.

Absolutely disgusting the amount of hate that white people get online, totally casually, and even moreso the self-hatred into which you've been indoctrinated by a left leaning media which plays on the same non-issues as Russian troll farms. Life has gotten so comfortable in the western world that people can literally spend 4-8 years of their lives on someone else's dollar studying to write about how "terrible" their privileged lives are. Totally absurd how far this country has fallen and the trash response to the virus does not surprise me in the least.

"The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's."

By characterizing it like that, you implicitly provide evidence to them that they are correct in that assumption. You create a binary situation where EITHER the government is doing a good job but they are "white, Christian, racist, [and] xenophobic" OR the government really is wasting their hard-earned money paying benefits to a bunch of "not my folk" and they aren't in fact racist/xenophobic/other bad things.

You aren't encouraging people to be less of those bad things; you're encouraging people to implicitly choose the side of the dilemma where they're already not bad, because of course they know themselves and they aren't bad, so we must be on the second branch.

I'm not talking about Aristotelian logic here, I'm talking about human intuitionist and tribal logic, and of course by extension, if I'm talking about that, I'm not talking about anything like actual facts.

I used to lean very socialist... until I actually worked in a few organizations in and around government. There is so much wastefulness it isn't funny. And all government operations seem to incentivize this waste. I lean much more libertarian now... I mean I'm pragmatic about it, but I feel that maximizing personal freedom and liberty and minimizing bureaucracy are far better approaches overall.

I do feel that allowing the level of foreign production and limiting the amount of preparedness we have had are big issues. It's a matter of national security as far as I am concerned. To me, it should be an FDA requirement for dual sourcing and at least 50% domestic production for the US market for prescribed medications and devices. Similar constraints should probably be true of most products sold in the US.

To me some of the biggest sources of waste are in terms of the subsidy programs that should be reigned in as well as military spending and foreign operations spending. I do feel infrastructure spending should probably be re-prioritized higher. All in all, we could probably cut half of the government's budget without too much effort... it would suck for some areas, but in general lead to a healthier outcome for the government holistically.

Making assumptions about motive is really poor form. Most people are mostly good, and generally have the best of intentions.

As to businesses being unable to stockpile resources or operational capital, there are MANY companies that are over-provisioned and have plenty of operational capital set aside. I'm sorry for your poor experience in the space. I have a friend that is in a similar position, and seeing similar frustrations in terms of security.

I find that most politicians are leaning into an ideology, that they may or may not believe in, for the purpose of expanding power. They whip up both support and dissent in the rank and file citizens and are dividing everyone into tribes (such as your assumptions of xenophobia, etc as motivation). I don't fit cleanly into either the D or R side, though I find the spread on the D side so wide that most D's don't fit into their own frames well at all.

As to big business, too many generations of MBAs running companies without those of domain knowledge and experience to counter them. They are driven in a way to optimize that are a poor fit for the humanity that should be included. Much like politicians, they often don't even believe in what they are doing and are more concerned with power, influence and monetary gain.

I'm definitely against corporate protectionism, as many libertarians are... there is a difference between capitalism and corporatism. Corporate rights are wholly granted by the government and there should be less of them, not more. The limited liability should definitely be an offset to certain restrictions, that doesn't mean choking companies in red tape, so much as limiting their collective rights. A company should not have a freedom of speech right... individuals have freedom of speech... and an organization of people can as well. For a company, that "right" should be limited in the same way their collective liability is limited. Companies should also be allowed to die.

Right now, there are a lot of things that are not going well, and I think we'll be feeling the repercussions for a generation to come, much like the 1918 flu and the following market crash about a decade later. US banking policies would be better aligned closer to Canada's banking regulations imho. The number of people panicking in so many ways, in addition to the "orange man bad" assertions are a bit overkill and don't make anything better. I don't like about 30% of Trump's policy choices. I think that on a personal level, he's a pompous asshole. That said, sometimes you need an asshole in charge, you need a certain amount of friction for working systems.

You also need communication and compromise and many of the Democrats are as or more guilty of unwillingness to participate in good will as the Republicans. The stonewalling over the support proposals for example are childish and only demonstrated by a 1400 page proposal including things that, like the green new deal, have no place in the stated legislation's purpose.

> The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but this feels a bit off to me.

I mean, no doubt this is a popular meme, but is it actually true? And if so, how true?

When you say GOP supporters consist of people with specific attributes (Christian, racist, etc), I am very unclear on the details of the representation of reality that your are projecting. For example, two obvious followup questions that immediately come to my mind are:

- what percentage of GOP supporters possess all of these attributes?

- what percentage of GOP supporters possess at least one of these attributes?

If you could provide this level of detail (including a link to your data source), I think it might add a lot of clarity to the thread, in turn improving the quality of discourse.

> I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."

Excuse me if I'm taking an excessively negative interpretation of your sentence, but to me this sounds something like "because you had an experience of difficulty securing sufficient funding for adequate disaster preparation, it therefore logically follows that all businesses will act in this same manner".

Now, "surely" that can't be what you really mean (if we were conversing on, say, /r/politics, I'd likely just assume that it was meant literally - but we're not, we're on HN)....and yet, I see no other way to interpret the words that you have written.

Or maybe you didn't mean it to be taken literally. Ok, fair enough, but if that's the case, then what meaning should I take from what you've said? That "some" (the specific number, be it 1% or 99%, matters not at all) GOP supporters are "racist"? Ummmm....ok? And?

> A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN.

This can't possibly be true, can it? I mean, take Google, Apple, Microsoft, any of the high flyers of the day. Are you actually saying that they couldn't survive for 12 months with zero revenue while maintaining current levels of expenses? My intuition informs me that these companies could survive for years. I guess I'd have to go check the actual financials to formally rebut you....but gosh, could my intuition really be that far off?

I can't shake this feeling that something weird is going on here. Something....almost unearthly. It is getting harder every day for me to believe that we aren't living in a simulation of some kind. Everywhere I look I see insanity. Black is white (but while simultaneously also being black), up is down, everything is possible, but also nothing is possible.

Am I the only one that feels like something very, very strange is going on right now? Like...you can almost feel it? Like....something is about to happen?

I know "conspiracy theories" aren't popular around here, but this thread came up on /r/conspiracy the other day, and regardless of whether it's "true" (I'm not even sure what that means anymore), I for one found it to be quite interesting. I mean, when the mainstream narrative stops making any sense, perhaps turning to people who have vast expertise in that domain (and they do) isn't all that crazy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/fld65g/feeling_...

I consider myself a super logical person, but this TikTok from the thread legit gives me the creeps:

https://www.tiktok.com/@zoesc00chiejuice/video/6803734042345...

I know it's almost certainly just some random edgy teenage girl (she has others that look similar: https://www.tiktok.com/@zoesc00chiejuice?)...but in times like these, I'm not sure it's such a good idea to completely disregard the warnings one's intuition provides.

There's more than one way to lessen effective resources being given towards something - inefficient allocation and cronyism isn't exactly a partisan issue. Perhaps we could leave behind the rhetoric about this being the fault of one side, and focus on how literally the entire country has been caught out as woefully unprepared? People used to have savings in this country, and it's not because corporations have squeezed it all out of them that they don't now - it's because people choose not to save anymore.

There's an outrage at people buyings masks and basic preparedness items now, but where's the outrage at hospitals who haven't even stockpiled trivially inexpensive (at the time) items like masks and gloves in preparation for a crisis? Did Trump force them to sell their stockpiles when he was elected? The blame game is a waste of enough time and resources when there isn't an international emergency - those politicians playing it now are practically criminal.

Here's a perfect example of the United States government running as a business (and completely failing its job to protect its citizens):

You know our emergency grain reserves? The reserves that hold up to 4 million metric tons of wheat, corn, sorghum, and rice, in case food supplies are interrupted?

Yeah. They sold everything in the reserves back in 2008. Since then, the trust is solely a cash reserve, invested in low-risk, short-term securities or instruments.

How the hell is cash supposed to save us, if there isn't actually any physical grain to be had?

For more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Emerson_Humanitarian_Trus...

When I see things like this I like to consider perhaps I know less about these things than the people in charge.

So I wonder, what where the sequence of events and decisions that lead to this outcome? and who were the people that made those decisions, and who are the people who continue to maintain that state of affairs and what is their rationale?

I also wonder exactly these same things. I'm not sure how to find out the answers though?

I would assume that the emergency reserves would have been expensive to maintain, with high amounts of spoilage.

I'm guessing that someone involved simply said, "Hey, you know, the free market has millions of tons of grain for sale right now. If there was an emergency, we could just buy what we need! Let's sell this pile of spoiling grain and just hang onto the cash! Cash will only increase in value, while grain is a depreciating asset."

But what they failed to realize (in my opinion) is that in times of famine (due to things like global warming or whatever), the free market's grain prices will skyrocket, and the grain reserves on the free market will most likely dwindle before we even realize there is an emergency.

I would like to see them stockpiling a constantly rotating reserve of grain, with old grain being constantly sold off, and new grain constantly being bought (to limit spoilage waste). If they did that, they could isolate our grain reserves and ensure the army had food to distribute even when times were tough and grain prices were extremely high.

I'm in Australia. My initial internet searches for Australian strategic food reserves / stockpiles don't seem to turn up anything.

Thinking about climate change here in Australia, and how some areas have been subject to quite persistent drought, it doesn't seem completely inconceivable that the whole continent could have a bad season.

Having said that, we do export a lot of grain, so you'd think if we'd be able to reduce / halt exports and still feed the nation maybe?

Blaming capitalism seems weird. Capitalism is not the only economic system with just-in-time or globally-interdependent supply chains. And capitalism can't explain why our strategic government stockpiles were never replenished.

There's a tendancy to compare the results of a system to what a wise, common-sense person with 20/20 hindsight would do if they were in charge. But that's not how things work. People in a system often fall victim to all kinds of bad assumptions, often thinking that others are wholly or partially responsible for dealing with a particular risk.

It looks like the US was caught flat-footed. It's too early to say how resilient we are, though. And it's way too early to start trying to push specific political angles like the idea that some mythical-but-non-specific non-capitalist system would have served us better.

The relevant incentives are there because of capitalism. Just as the incentives to cover things up or shift blame were there in the USSR during Chernobyl.

Without a point of comparison this is meaningless. Do command economies have a "mask czar" that makes sure nobody runs out of masks? And does that, in general, work better?

Why do you assume a command economy?

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