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. :-)
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. :-)