> The gloves, produced almost entirely in south and east Asia, rely on a finite supply of natural rubber, highly-specialized factories and niche manufacturing expertise. Ramping up supply couldn't happen quickly and production from trusted, established brands was spoken for years in advance.

In search of a start-up idea? There it is. A medical grade gloves that can replace traditional nitrile gloves.

Do people do that, start a company based on a wish for an advancement in materials science? I would think it would be more common, and wiser, to first have an innovation from a research lab then start a company to productize it.

Like vinyl gloves?

Nitrile gloves have better puncture resistance and better tactile sensing than vinyl gloves. This makes them preferred for patient interaction.

I suppose new vinyl is better than covertly recycled, contaminated, and leaking nitrile though.

No, vinyl is lower quality from TFA.

There were definitely bad actors in the pandemic PPE procurement rush. It's mostly cleaned up now (prices/availability are more reasonable) but we would start to see all the lawsuits/investigations come forth from the activity earlier in the year.

Too many folks jumped into the business without knowing how it works/how to do verification.

We've done a fair bit of nitrile glove trading (after our initial work with N95 procurement & donations early in the pandemic) and happy to answer what I can.

This is the kind of outcome to be expected when we shut down local production and concomitantly lose local skills. As we've seen with masks, we've lost the ability to retool quickly.

This is a matter of national strategic importance and there have been far too many instances of it in recent years. If we want to continue with free trade then we ought to sort out what's of strategic importance and what's not.

Surely all the masks were fine, tho, right?

Right?

After the piracy of supplies last year during a pandemic, I must say this feels quite like karma.