I cannot for the life of me understand why we aren't turning every available textile mill into mask manufacturers right now. It should be trivial to do and clothes aren't a critical item. I'm sure most countries have planned something like this as it's a common need during major wars. We're basically saying that since it's not 100% effective, so it's not worth it. Meanwhile, neither is social distancing, but that's super dooper important.
This is such an important point and so widely misunderstood.
I feel like most Americans, when talking about the loss of US manufacturing, think of Ohio, Indiana, and other "rust belt" states, when the reality is, a huge amount of textile production centering on the east coast, from furniture manufacturing in North Carolina, to paper mills and cotton processing down to Atlanta, is gone.
My working theory is that it's because those places are national election battleground states. Just kind of shocking when you realize there are 30-40K coal miners in the entire US, not even a Google worth of people, let alone a midsize city, and this small group is deciding our elections?
The states are important because they're swing states, and coal is important only because of what it represents about identity and messaging.
A lot of the rust belt was blue when Democrats focused their messaging heavily on workers protections.
People in the rust belt only have a few strong political priorities:
1. Their communities have watched their quality of living decline gradually over 40+ years now as industry and manufacturing in the US have become less competitive. They want jobs in their community, specifically ones they envision their community as capable of doing. Many of them take advantage of government benefits, and whether or not they are personally able to work or have a job, they know their community was better off when they had jobs.
2. Their population skews older and has more traditional ideas about social issues, but the rust belt is not the bible belt. Church attendance across the rust belt is very average compared to other states. Most aren't looking to push their beliefs on anyone else, but they don't see progressive social policies as something they personally want or need.
3. After long periods of decline, they don't trust promises. Many of them have grown poorer after every national election in their lifetime, as they've watched the rest of the country become more prosperous. For those growing up, success is measured by whether or not you 'made it out'. When someone promises them prosperity, they learned it's not for them, it's for everyone else.
4. While they don't trust politicians, they also don't trust businesses. They've had a front row seat view of what it means for businesses to chew people up and spit them out. They were heavily pro-union.... when they or their parents had jobs. Now many are questioning themselves, did unions help us or cause our jobs to disappear?
These people aren't policy experts or economists. They're working-class people with working-class educations and working-class expectations for themselves.
Whether or not Democratic platform policies would actually help them, the rest of the image of the Democratic platform rubs them the wrong way so much that it doesn't matter. Many of them voted blue for years, only to now feel like the party has passed them by and now only cares about the social and economic needs of people living on the coasts.
> My working theory is that it's because those places are national election battleground states. Just kind of shocking when you realize there are 30-40K coal miners in the entire US, not even a Google worth of people, let alone a midsize city, and this small group is deciding our elections?
Unfortunately, you just discovered the unjust math of "popular" elections. This is the reason for a paradox why people like TD have such success winning elections in countries with plurality voting.
Small, but extremely zealous coherent voting blocks consistently outmatch, a wide, but piecemeal support across many diverse groups.
I live in Portugal and some producers are being told to make disinfectant out of drinking alcohol.
I assume the same is being done with mask production, or will be done. The same is happening with alcohol in other European countries, I don't know about the US.
With the Russia - Saudi Arriba oil war going on ethanol producers are caught in the crossfire and have no problem supplying all the ethanol sanitizer users could want. (I don't think they are happy about it considering, but they are eager to corner this new market even if it only lasts for a few weeks)
Can confirm - here in Czech Republic the government even released illegaly produced alcohol they have confiscated in the past few months for companies to make sanitizers.
And not only alcohol related companies are making sanitizer now, even chemical oriented high schools and university faculties. Even a fuel distribution company reportedly reprurposed one of their huge tanks for large scale sanitizer production.
I wonder - there seem to be all kinds of studies going on about SARS-CoV-2 and results seem to spread fast in the current news climate. Are there studies for the effectiveness of masks planned or going on as well?
Because different environments yield different behavior. Just like in finance or business.
I feel like we've grown accustomed to a world where money is readily available (low interest rates), there's relative peace/safety, little trade friction, and we can ship things around the world cheaply.
Maybe we need to let the pendulum swing back a bit and do a little more manufacturing in the US? The problem is that it probably isn't economically viable except in times of crisis. So unless the federal or state government comes out and subsidizes it outright (something they do do in China, btw) it probably won't happen.
I do, on the other hand, think the last few years might be peak globalization. Wages are rising in China, there's more trade tension, and more environmental consciousness (shipping)...I'm no Trump supporter, but you kind of can see the outline of how some manufacturing might be coming back to the US.
There’s enough manufacturing capacity in the US to produce plenty of ventilators, masks, and and test kits.
But nobody took the warnings serious in January and connected enough dots to think of ramping up production. Even now, nobody seems to be in charge. There are manufacturers on Twitter claiming they’re ready to produce masks but are being asked to apply for certification by mail.
