I’m not saying that making the basic machinery for PPE is easy compared to say, simple firearms. They’re obviously more complex. But they’re also a known problem; we’ve been making PPE out of the same basic materials since 1972. Compared to other large scale efforts the US has undergone to fight wars or handle other national pride situations, making more PPE machines is both cheaper and simpler. It does not require the creation of new technologies, nor the whole sale mobilization and re-organization of our society. All it requires is the application of enough money to buy an F-35 or two to rebuild the machines that were dismantled back in 2000.

This is not complicated, we just lack the will as a society to fix this.