Yes, and the American N95+ mask manufacturers didn't want to risk another boom-bust cycle so when the government wouldn't guarantee them a long term purchase deal, they couldn't ramp up. They had gone through this same scenario during the first SARS scare and almost went bankrupt when everyone went back to buying cheaper imported masks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...

Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_related_to_the_COVID...

Both yes and no. It was a brief lack of available local stock from suddenly unexpected demand, followed by a lack of factories willing to stop doing well paid work to switch to making cheap masks, while we waited for even cheaper masks to get made and imported from countries with cheap labor, followed by a surplus of masks (source: a brief chat with a factory manager in my social network who was considering whether he could at least break even on costs and labor if temporarily switching to making masks)

Even then, there weren't enough melt spinning machines in North America to make the necessary raw materials, and the lead time on new machines was too long to address the shortage in time to respond to the needs of a pandemic.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n95-mask-shortage-melt-blown-fi...

I think so, isn't that why they brought in all the KN95 masks? The K meaning "Korean."

KN95 is Chinese.

Yes, it was a severe and acute issue.