I lost it when I read this

Millions of N95 masks have been available in US, UK,and Canada during this epidemic. Millions of those masks are being purchased by foreign buyers, while we desperately need them here.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-th...

The reason is that while states are trying to buy them, they must provide proof of ability to pay for them before the deal is made. By the time they do that, foreign buyers have swooped in and bought them.

Take a look at even just the first part of the article. It begins with a brief 3 paragraph summary. I lack the skill to copy and paste on my laptop without a mouse, sorry.

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Granma's picture

Is the responsibility of the federal government. But IMO, this is not just on the Trump administration. It is on the Obama administration for not stocking the federal medical reserve. And it is on the Congresses and Senates of tha last decade for passing budgets that cut all public health agencies to the bone while giving more and more $ to the military. I suspect building even one less expensive bomb would have paid for the needed equipment to be purchased and stored.

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CB's picture

From your link:

“Many people are marking up the prices in the middle,” he said. “People are just trying to make as much money as possible.”

There's an answer to that. Use it.
DOJ vows to aggressively combat coronavirus price gouging

Didn't the Trumpster brag that the US was "helping many many countries all over the world" when he was talking about how great American companies were in quickly "making millions and millions of masks and other medical stuff"?

By the end of the day, roughly 280 million masks from warehouses around the U.S. had been purchased by foreign buyers and were earmarked to leave the country, according to the broker — and that was in one day.

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Granma's picture

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snoopydawg's picture

not just people who don't have purchasing power or need authorization from their bosses. Why haven't they moved heaven and earth to get their workers supplies? But is anyone really surprised by how bad this whole epidemic has been handled? Boomer remover started out as a joke, but I'm not so sure anymore. Not with how corporations got bailed out with no means of seeing if they actually needed to while we got peanuts. Nancy and Mitch have said that they are not doing another bailout for we the little folks.

Guess Barry didn't think about how bad this would look.

What a dweeb.

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CB's picture

@snoopydawg
three hundred million masks per day right now if Trump had done his job properly instead of minimizing the COVID-19 pandemic that was looming over the country. He had almost 2 months lead-time. All he had to do was look at what was happening in China like I did. It was available to anyone if they cared to look.

BTW, the reason Xi Jinping was successful in China was he assigned the various logistical decision making to individual ministers who had expertise in their respective fields. That's how everything got done so fast there. Unfortunately, Trump needed to be in control of everything, even that to which he had no expertise in the least.

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB

4 decades of neoliberalism has gutted our ability to make things in this country. Corporations have offshored their factories while chasing bigger profits and congress has allowed them to do so. Both parties have watched as hundreds if not thousands of rural and not rural hospitals have closed down and they have gutted the number of nurses to patient ratios which nurses have been screaming about for years.

The biggest failure to address rising health care costs was the hideously flawed ACA which transferred money from the middle class to the health insurance companies. Congress has been cutting reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid for decades...I could go on about this but you all know what I'm talking about. Yes Trump dropped the ball on getting ahead of the epidemic, but so did Cuomo and other governors. Krystal and Saagar talked about how during Obama's tenure a company was hired to make more ventilators, but then they got bought out by a bigger company who then stopped building them and then they got bought out by Medtronic and here we are.

It's 4 decades of failure to govern by our government. The ball just stopped during Trump's presidency. Bottom line is that it's we the people who are paying the price for their failure.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@snoopydawg

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

CB's picture

@snoopydawg
But, here we are 2 months in and just beginning to make those 300 million masks and other things we need and it's going to take another month to get the production up to that level.

If the clown in the WH had done his job as he should, he could have put someone in charge to do an inventory. Then he could have put Obama to shame and got the ball rolling to start production immediately to rectify the situation.

I listened to him bullshit for 8 weeks. The only thing he prioritized were trillion dollar bailouts to the banks and corporations and the Dems were right behind him every step of the way with their noses stuck firmly up his ass.

The US could've been the one helping other nations all around the world. Instead it was left to China and Russia to take our place.

When this is all over, do you think we will get an honest inquiry into this gross dereliction of duty?

U.S. announces aid for China, other countries impacted by coronavirus
February 7, 2020 / 11:03 AM / 2 months ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States stands ready to spend up to $100 million to assist China and other countries impacted by coronavirus, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Friday.

“This commitment – along with the hundreds of millions generously donated by the American private sector – demonstrates strong U.S. leadership in response to the outbreak,” Pompeo said in a statement.

He said the U.S. government’s commitment would be met through existing funds “both directly and through multilateral organizations.”
...
HHS last week sent Congress notice that it might transfer an additional $136 million from other HHS programs. In the briefing, Azar said no decision had yet been made to authorize any additional funds and said it was “premature” to ask Congress for additional funds to support the outbreak response.

Earlier on Friday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told Fox Business Network that the threat to the United States from the virus remained low and praised China for demonstrating “an unprecedented level of transparency” over the outbreak.

“President Trump took decisive and unprecedented action cancelling air flights, limiting access to this country from people coming from China now a week ago, and we continue to believe that the threat to the American public is low,” he said.

Pence said Trump had told Chinese President Xi Jinping in a telephone call on Thursday evening that the United States was ready to help via the WHO.

“The loss of life, the coronavirus that is impacting people of China, and fortunately, a small number of people in the United States to date is heartbreaking. But we stand ready to work with China to provide them any and all support,” Pence said.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@snoopydawg

governments just don’t have the unlimited ready cash to close a deal on the “open” [black?] market. Certainly no deal was ever made during the 10 hour period in the article as Americans bidding for the equipment were always outbid by foreign buyers. It was an exercise in futility.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

This country went from putting a man on the moon to not making jack here because companies chased the almighty dollar on Wall Streets orders. And congress didn't put any strings on the massive bailouts that corporations just got. Why couldn't they insist that they bring their factories back home if they wanted help? Sure it might cost more, but not if CEOs didn't get massive bonuses.

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Granma's picture

Don't have authority to purchase. They have to show proof of ability to pay, that the funds are there, and do it quickly. States should not be having to bid against each other. That just runs the price up. The federal government should have taken care of this week's ago. Trump refused. He told the states to take care of it themselves. I cannot quote him verbatim. It was weeks ago.

The whole situation is so messed up, it is like very bad fiction. A competent housekeeper could and would do better.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@Granma

fought with computers. It’s complete madness. TPTB must be insane.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

travelerxxx's picture

@Lily O Lady

TPTB must be insane.

Well, they are insane. It's the result of an illness called Insatiable Greed. Pretty sure it's terminal.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@travelerxxx

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

travelerxxx's picture

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