4 years ago, an exec for a top PPE producer testified to Congress that in Jan 2020 (as fear of covid began to spread) his firm offered to ramp up production to make 1.7 million N95 masks available to the public per week.
The Trump admin said no.
Follow
@rbreich I'm no Trump fan, but in this instance I'd offer up us in the UK as a counterexample. We said yes to everyone who was mates with a Tory MP offering to sell us PPE (and ignored those who weren't) and literally ended up with the guy who ran the health secretary's local pub getting a giant government contract. Billions of pounds spent on PPE that was unusable and simply burned.
Needed to take opportunities, yes. But also to have a process that worked.
