Why Are We Still Experiencing Shortages Of PPE??

Depending on when you start measuring, January when the president knew we had a problem, or February when most the rest of us were forewarned, here we are months into the pandemic and the governor and front line health care providers are still saying that there aren’t enough masks or gowns or other PPE items. That masks and gowns are being reused sometimes days at a time…10 months after the president knew that we had a serious pandemic coming.

And although the president said the cupboard was bare…and whether that was true or not is now beside the point…because first, he had three years to refill the larder. But more seriously this has been an ongoing issue for 10 months and the president has done little to nothing to resolve it.

Oh, yeah he got the respirator issue resolved and used his power to get manufacturers to ramp up production.

But where are the masks? Where are the gowns? Why, in the face of a runaway pandemic, doesn’t the president have this under control? This is an actual matter of life and death…particularly for the front line health care workers who we are all lauding as heroes…but their heroism doesn’t mean we should subject them to a careless lack of support from our government.

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2 thoughts on “Why Are We Still Experiencing Shortages Of PPE??

  1. First, thanks for the work you’ve done to provide four topics to comment on and I hope I’m not the only one to join in.

    “Profiteering over the coronavirus pandemic is still in the larval stage.” -Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/big-pharma-covid-19-profits-1041185/

    The question you pose about the lack of PPE is quite simple to answer. There were no “just-in-time,” manufacturing, real or theoretical, profitable investor capitalist incentives to have such medical necessities stored and ready in case of such a widely and agreed upon forecast for the likelihood of a series of pandemics, that this is unfortunately, just one of many to come. IOW, no private corporate money to immediately be made, to be prepared.

    I could go on but your question points to the absolute necessity of a nationalized health care system, just as we have nationalized the military and socialized the costs for building ships and bombs and bullets.

    Where would just-in-time manufacturing, forgoing the private corporate investor costs of manufacturing, storing and maintaining our national arsenal be under that scenario? Obama/Biden ran out of bombs if you recall, and geez, heaven forbid that McConnell/Pelosi et.al., allow that to happen again regardless of a failure to divert some of that spending to halt the predicted 100K more US citizen deaths by inauguration day.

    1. Come on, we’ve known for decades that pharmaceutical corporations respond to ailments effecting wealthy white population immediately. This is exactly why any profit motive should be taken out of the healthcare world. Operation “Warp Speed” should have required not only government cooperation, but also a limit on the potential profit. 80% of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine has already been bought up wealthy white western countries. Of course Pfizer’s vaccine requires a refrigeration protocol not readily available in developing countries for distribution, which only brings up another item in health equity.

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