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Comment by hurricanetc | Hacker News Reader

If he had actually used the DPA last week this wouldn’t have happened. This shipment had already left the US and was in Bangkok.

And if he had used the DPA in January we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

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What would he do that for? If you recall, in January _zero_ people other than the president gave any shit about the virus. We didn't have any cases until something like January 19. 3 days later they formed the working group, and on Jan 31 they closed flights with China (Biden and liberal media called the move "racist"). To remind you at the time everyone was busy with third attempt at "investigation" and impeachment. Invoking DPA would be a bit "interesting" under those circumstances, and the dems would howl that he's "authoritarian", just like they are beginning to howl about it now, when there's end in sight for this. Do I need to show you the headlines and clips from end of January to lengthen your attention span? Pelosi handing out pens and inviting people to Chinatown? DeBlasio telling people to ignore coronavirus? Every single liberal media outlet saying Trump is overreacting and this is no worse than a flu?

If Europe - which is, as you may recall, not led by Trump - had expanded their N95 mask production capacity back in January we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Continental Europe is at least as capable of doing so as the US, if not more so (one of the main global manufacturers of the specialist melt-blowing machines required to make the filtering material in them is based there). The main problem is that it just doesn't seem to be possible to increase N95 production capacity enough within the timescale necessary, no matter what Trump or anyone else orders companies to do.

(Trump could obviously also have used the DPA to ban mask exports back in January, but that'd just have screwed the rest of the world - including countries which, frankly, were in more desperate and immediate need of them back then - in an even more spectacular and counter-productive fashion. It was in the US's direct interest to reduce the spread of coronavirus in other countries back then.)

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