The U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China Seth G. Jones. CSIS. https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-to-deter-conflict-with-China/ Affordable Mass: The Need for a Cost-Effective PGM Mix for Great Power Conflict Mark A. Aunzinger. 2021 11. Mitchell Institute. https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Affordable_Mass_Policy_Paper_31-FINAL.pdf Ukraine War
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“The federal government created the stockpile, originally the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, in 1999 to counter potential biological, disease and chemical threats to civilian populations. It was eventually renamed the Strategic National Stockpile in 2003, and the Department of Defense was given a role in its management alongside HHS. The stockpile was designed as a stopgap that would allow the federal government to surge supplies to specific areas experiencing disasters or threats, supplementing local procurement efforts. It was not meant to be the sole source for private and public institutions to obtain medical supplies in emergency settings.
Hospitals, public health departments and other health care facilities are supposed to maintain their own stocks of masks, gowns, drugs and ventilators. But during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, they ran out of those basic supplies. The overwhelming number of Covid-19 patients forced both private and public institutions to search for personal protective equipment and therapeutics on the open market.”
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“A year and a half into the pandemic, the U.S. still does not have a good way to quickly scale production of drugs and medical supplies needed to help supplement the strategic national stockpile, in part because manufacturers operate on just-in-time principals. Those standards are supposed to minimize inventory and maximize efficiency, but struggle to account for swings in demand.
“Everybody — shippers, hospitals, pharmacy chains — no one wants to hold inventory. Who is going to pay for those expensive medicines sitting there month after month?” O’Toole said. “This is why hospital stockpiles have dwindled.”
The federal government is beginning to work with the private sector to ensure manufacturers have the ability to scale production quickly during large-scale disease outbreaks.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is working with its parent, HHS, to find companies willing to alter their standard manufacturing practices to scale up production of therapeutics and other medical supplies to better prepare for the next pandemic. But expanding manufacturing capacity in the U.S. is not easy, one former Trump administration official who worked with BARDA told POLITICO. It will take years to build facilities, manufacturing lines and hire staff to oversee production, the former official said.”
“One thing that happened is that after the 2009 H1N1 pandemic there were a lot of masks distributed to states and localities and they simply weren’t replenished. Then there was a plan to purchase thousands more ventilators. A contract was signed with a small medical equipment company in Southern California. That company was then bought by a different medical equipment company, and in the end the contract wasn’t fulfilled. The new ventilators never came in.
So there are these matters of prioritization and inattention that can affect whether in fact we have the supplies that have been recommended in the stockpile.”
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“There’s a key period that a lot of people are now focusing on, which is late January to mid-February. This is a point at which we were already aware of what had happened in China, and the World Health Organization had declared Covid-19 a “global health emergency of international concern.”
That was really the time to consider whether we had the supplies we needed of these essential items and to figure out whether the stockpile needed to be replenished rapidly and do whatever it took to make sufficient supplies available — whether that meant purchasing supplies from other sources or even using the DPA to force manufacturers to shift to production of ventilators, for example.
So even if it had not been replenished prior to this administration, there was a chance to do a better job at the outset.”