How did they know to order more supplies in December?

China reported the new novel strain of the coronavirus to the WHO on December 31. [1] If correct, then this means they were monitoring the news, and reacted immediately, and on the very same day of the fresh report.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6905e1.htm

It's been widely known outside of China that this a novel SARS-like disease was spreading since December 20th, they just didn't confirm that it was novel until the 31st.

I can't find any article on google dated before december 30 about "pneumonia china".

We just didn’t know how serious this would get. We had H1N1, swine flu, ebola, SARS, MERS, none got out of hand this crazy.

Our own president and task force kept on downplaying it for so long and giving us the wrong information. Even CDC was downplaying for a long time.

Perhaps this shows that industry experts, with skin in the game, are better at determining the relevant trends than the people and institutions you mention.

China spent more than a week attempting to cover coronavirus up. By the time the Chinese government made a statement the problem was pretty well known among the Wuhan medical community.

Hamilton are also facing problems supply chain problems. The last thing I read about them a few days ago (in the Swiss press) was that Romania had stopped exporting a component they needed because they didn't seem to understand it wasn't a "medical device" but only a component for one. I assume that got resolved quite quickly.

It also sounds like many patients don't need a full hospital ventilator. A CPAP machine could do. Those are already made in bulk for sleep apnea patients.