This was a huge failure on the federal government.
All they had to do was guarantee to buy up a minimum number of masks at a reasonable price, which would have been the reasonable thing to do anyway (even if there was overproduction, they can start a new stockpile). A lot of new manufacturers were willing to dump costs into tooling up production if they knew there would be demand in a year or two for the product.
But because the government waffled so long, and kept casting doubt even on the length of the pandemic, barely anyone was willing to dump the money into production.
As I understand it, the current situation is that the majority of manufacturers for N95 masks today were the same ones that existed in 2019.
All they had to do was guarantee to buy up a minimum number of masks at a reasonable price, which would have been the reasonable thing to do anyway (even if there was overproduction, they can start a new stockpile). A lot of new manufacturers were willing to dump costs into tooling up production if they knew there would be demand in a year or two for the product.
But because the government waffled so long, and kept casting doubt even on the length of the pandemic, barely anyone was willing to dump the money into production.
As I understand it, the current situation is that the majority of manufacturers for N95 masks today were the same ones that existed in 2019.