While it is very obviously suboptimal, I don't see why 3D printing should be dismissed entirely in situations like the current one.

The point is that we have thousands of these 3d printing machines distributed around the world, with a good amount of source material. At this point, we can afford to brute-force our way to producing hundreds of thousands of items, don't we?

This is not going to solve all our manufacturing needs, not even by a long shot, but it seems it could fill very specific critical and unexpected needs.

It's an opportunity cost. If we allocate resources that can otherwise be put to a better use, why not? Efficiency is king in mass production.

By all means, use 3D printing at hospital level to get things made that's needed. A parts of the face shield (such as the head band) can be locally manufacturered using 3d printers.

But it is boggling to me that the media keeps wanting to get 3D printing buzzword clicks than actually asking manufacturing engineers.

3D printing becomes more viable as people use it. Right now it is pretty niche, but many groups are doing it on an industrial scale.

If every household or building had one, the parts could be crowdsourced from every machine that could make them.

The difference between where 3D printing and injection molding technology is right now is that 3D printers have scaled down in size and cost to the point of consumers being regular folks.

As for right now, 3D printing can help but it won’t be the savior of mankind.

Yet

Is there no such thing as a chain of custody for parts manufacturing? Crowd sourcing plastic parts from printers seems beyond naive. Do you know what goes into design of plastic molds or the repeatability and tolerances required? How do you quality control parts created from layers of hot glue? Plastic molded parts can rely on fundamental chemical understanding and tuned parameters of a molding machine.