This is an incredibly easy problem to solve, relative to the current crisis: it only requires the federal government allocate enough money.

There is some price per mask at which the N95 respirator manufacturers that currently exist in the US would be willing to hire more people, buy more supplies, etc and start running 24/7. The only reason they aren't already is because nobody has agreed to pay for it.

From what I've heard, the US federal government agreed contracts fairly early on in the crisis where they'd buy up any excess US production of N95 masks that goes unsold in order to guarantee a market for exactly this reason.

We subsidize American agriculture because its important. We should do the same for other industries. I'm not sorry public services and concepts like this fly in the face of economic ideology that profit motive is the end-all be-all.

> And no guarantees on cheap chinese goods flooding the market and taking all your customers in a few months.

You might could fix that with strong tariffs. There was a guy recently, can’t remember his name, who was very much in favor of domestic manufacturing and tariffs against China. Seemed to catch a lot of flak for those policies! Wish I could remember who that was...

Bingo. It's amazing, this could have been the shining moment for his platform. Give domestic mask manufacturers immediate long-term federal contracts and a promise of significant tariffs when the dust settles. Instead he denied the problem even existed, encouraged people to get infected, and delayed our response by six weeks.