
Texas medical masks manufacturer is caught in coronavirus’s supply chain panic - danso
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/15/coronavirus-mask-shortage-texas-manufacturing/
======
bsder
Welcome to the end result of Just In Time inventory.

Nobody wants to hold inventory because that represents "wasted money". So,
when you need inventory, everybody is screwed.

This is just like the banking crisis of 2008. There is no point in being the
Cassandra. If you're right, _everybody_ is screwed. If your wrong, you
personally lose.

Better to just bank your money and try to bail out as soon as possible.

~~~
jriley
Texas also charges ~2.5% annually on value of inventory.

~~~
ratsmack
Static value should never be taxed, which includes real property. The value
should only become apparent at the time of sale.

~~~
bsder
On property I _totally_ don't agree. Prop 13 in California is the poster child
for the damage that kind of thinking causes.

On parts inventory, I'm probably quite a bit more in agreement. Holding
inventory is risky, but spectacularly useful when there are disruptions.

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onetimemanytime
Just like agriculture and heavy industry, USA must make sure that medical
supplies are made here. In an emergency, no country will let a company export
to USA, they need them back home first.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Central planning? That should go down well??

~~~
notfromhere
Import focused labor arbitrage schemes that US multinationals have been
pushing for the last 40 years break down when the flow of goods stops.

Critical industries need to be domestic because otherwise the country is left
vulnerable in a crisis.

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neonate
[https://archive.md/OHklY](https://archive.md/OHklY)

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mattigames
Trusting profit-motivated organizations to make decisions that are aligned
with the common good has been proven to be a mistake over and over again; Is
actually in healthcare's industry best interest that even more people get
cancer; in general everything health related should be highly controlled and
supplied by the government itself to avoid such dangerous motivators, even the
food industry must be highly regulated to make sure it doesn't make false
health-related promises, and in general any product promising health benefits.

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ISL
There must be an investor out there willing to speculate on the probability of
a health scare.

~~~
missosoup
I forgot the name, but there's a whole site dedicated to listing what to
long/short for various 'immoral' scenarios like major disasters, pandemics,
housing crashes, etc.

~~~
whatshisface
How are any of those things immoral? Let's say you think there is a pandemic
coming and you invest in mask manufacturers. They use your investment to build
more mask factories. When the pandemic hits they sell more masks because their
new factories can handle the demand spike. Your make more money, and the
public gets better protection while being saved from a price spike - all
because you offered your money and foresight. You could tell the same stories
for the other events.

~~~
unishark
Basically you have unnecessary production capacity losing money the majority
of the time, which can only pay off during infrequent emergencies.

Then if price-gouging laws prevent you from charging more during an emergency
you won't make your money back.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Your kids will named and shamed in school cause daddy jacked up the prices
when people are dying. The government needs to invest, and even keep a few
essential factories on standby or buy, say linens from factories that if
needed will make masks. WTH, we invest $700 BILLION in the military and if you
don't have antibiotics, scrubs and other basics, what's the point?

The government bailed out car companies and other than jobs, it also means
that in a WW scenario, the GM and Ford factories will make tanks instead of
cars. Some things re essential.

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MrBuddyCasino
No one in this thread mentioned the federal emergency stockpile of 100mio
masks. It seems this is at least in principle the solution to this issue? If a
4 week stockpile turns out to be insufficient, make it a 8 week stockpile,
problem solved.

~~~
celticninja
Storage and rotation is your biggest issue.

~~~
nitrogen
For rotation, can the stockpile be made part of the normal supply chain, so
that masks are sold halfway through their shelf life and new ones flow into
the stockpile? Or does the size of such a stockpile mean that the masks would
expire faster than the market would buy them?

~~~
whatshisface
I don't want all of the masks I buy to be through half their life already.
Also, how can the government have the power to do that?

~~~
dragontamer
> Also, how can the government have the power to do that?

Through laws?

USA has a strategic reserve of oil.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_\(United_States\))

I really don't see how masks, or other emergency equipment, changes things.
Stockpiling stuff for emergencies seems to be the thing that governments
should do.

~~~
whatshisface
They buy the oil, they don't force everyone to give it to them for a time
before being allowed to sell it.

~~~
samatman
How did you come up with the idea that anyone is advocating for some kind of
force majeure?

The proposal is for USG to buy a bunch of masks and sell them halfway through
their useful life. Absolutely no one, other than you, is interpreting this as
a requirement that fresh masks cannot be sold under penalty of law.

That's a bizarre and tortured interpretation of what's being discussed here.

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cheschire
I never understood the obsession with masks and simultaneous complete lack of
interest in simple reusable cotton gloves.

Is it because masks get more attention and there’s a large overlap between
narcissists and people scared of the zombie apocalypse?

I’m kidding about that, but it’s really odd how easily people seem to flock
without attempting any deeper analysis.

~~~
pmoriarty
I don't understand why you'd use cotton gloves instead of nitrile or latex
gloves. The latter seem like they'd be far more impervious to pathogens.

I'm also really skeptical of the effectiveness of flimsy surgical masks.

I'd expect respirators with filters of the P100 and N95 variety (which
respectively filter out 100% and 95% of particles 3 microns or larger) to be
far more effective.

~~~
alexmingoia
AFAIK coronaviruses are around 0.1-0.3 microns.

~~~
deepnotderp
Aerosol droplets are the primary airborne spreading mechanism as far as we
know.

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DataWorker
This is racism and irresponsible journalism “all but 3 deaths have been in
China.”

There is a time lag! The disease doesn’t care if you are Chinese or white. No
hospital system can handle the numbers that came first to China, and will soon
come here.

Wapo downplaying the virus. Just like they’ve downplayed the threat of
globalism. And those who have tried to sound the alarm or argued that we
should, gasp, renegotiate trade and bring back some manufacturing, those
people are slandered as xenophobic or economics dunces. “Any serious person
knows we can’t bring manufacturing back.” “Protectionism is stupid, trade wars
hurt us,etc...” And now they want to tell the American public, “no death
outside China.” Blood on their hands!

~~~
pbourke
> This is racism and irresponsible journalism “all but 3 deaths have been in
> China.”

Why would you say that this is racism or irresponsible journalism? It seems
like a simple statement of fact.

~~~
DataWorker
It’s a fact that has no importance other than to mislead. There is no reason
to think the virus is any less deadly outside of China or in non-Asian
patients. The rest of the world is just a few weeks, give or take local
variation in R0, behind and we should expect the same or similar outcomes.
That’s according to the experts who spoke at the senate hearing last week.

~~~
danso
The fact that only 3 deaths have occurred outside of China (and the vast
majority in Wuhan is an important metric in assessing how the virus spreads
and how effective or not containment policies have been. There are many, many
Chinese people who live outside of China, and emphasizing that the virus is
heavily contained in the country of its origin is pretty relevant to anyone
who hasn’t visited China recently.

~~~
DataWorker
The death rate has very little to do with containment. The rate of infection
does. In this case both of these merely represent the time lag, and despite
what you think all of the experts agree— we are buying time at this point.
Argue with the experts, not with me.

