>> My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
There's a guy with a small company that makes N95 masks in the US. He got pissed when they came looking for a production increase. He would be happy to increase production, but nobody was willing to buy from him long-term. They'll just go back to importing cheaper product (probably from China) after the crisis is over. He basically told them to go pound sand.
The "imperialist" model can still work fine if we want to stick with it.
We can keep production in poorer countries with poor worker and environmental protections so long as those countries will clearly side with us and aren't all concentrated in China's sphere of influence. No one's doing a naval blockade of the entire US coastline. And even if they did, we also have some long land borders with allies.
The problem is that US needs to find responsible governments other than the ones close to China. There are not many in the world. They are poor for some reasons.
BTW when I say responsible governments I don't mean democratic, but mean they care about people's education, can keep long term policies and build good infrastructures.
In general, I'd say we've been able to deal with issues by outbidding other countries and exerting international political influence.
> My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
We're so bad at building.
I'd add to your question with: how custom-built do factories need to be to be efficient?
I expect chip fab is very tailored, but can a t-shirt factory quickly pivot to surgical masks? How about N-95? Can a vacuum cleaner factory start building ventilators? How about HEPA filters? mRNA vaccines?
What are critical things we may need to ramp up rapidly, not just for pandemics, but for the next disaster, and can they be done without building dedicated factories just for those items?
Humans are fabulously general-purpose, so I'd imagine that the more automated the process, the more expensive it is to switch. This would put high-wage countries like the US at a disadvantage with regard to flexible domestic manufacturing. But I've no expertise in this area at all.
These are questions and guesses, not questions and answers. :-)
Thing is, you are assuming that’s what is important.
Look at the billions the US spends on military, all of it domestic. In US, the masks are simply less important than all that, as is healthcare in general.
> My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
It's not important. Masks don't effectively stop the transmission of SARS2 and N95 masks are only highly effective against something as infectious as SARS2 Delta if you wear them precisely as intended (and to go with that you need to take many other precautions that the mass population is never going to take with great precision on a day to day basis). Even the vaccines don't stop Delta effectively, which you can plainly see from the large outbreaks in highly vaccinated nations.
> My question is why did it take this long?
Because the US Government spends nearly all of its effort on dumb shit, like shuffling papers, playing at admin, processing lobbyist appointments, screeching out empty promises every 2-4 years, going on talk shows and managing PR, managing a globalist superpower clown show, projecting power to every corner of the globe for no great reason other than to fulfill the powerlust of those in control.
They're supposed to be running our government for our people. They're simultaneously running the equivalent of one of the world's largest governments outside of our borders. Think about that for a moment. Do I think the people in power can run the US Government, domestically, effectively? Hell no. Do I think they can then simultaneously run a gigantic other foreign system - military bases, personnel, war, huge embassies, global trade, sticking their noses in every foreign political issue and at all times - on top of that? Triple hell no.
The related chip shortage finally woke up the US gov on supply chains.
My question is why did it take this long? I have been worried about this for nearly a decade.
My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?