Why N95 masks are hard to make • Hacker News Board

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#231

Post by bitL » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #211

bitL wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Disposable is best and you should discard your mask after each use,” says Dr. Besser. “If a mask gets wet—and it will by simply breathing into it—the effectiveness of its protective effect is reduced.” Are you really going to change your surgical mask every 3 minutes to make it effective against getting infected?

> the effectiveness of its protective effect is reduced. How did you jumped from "reduced" to "completely useless". > Are you really going to change your surgical mask every 3 minutes to make it effective against getting infected? My typical situation is not surgical situation.

You obviously don't get it how a virus survives outside body. It survives because it is inside a wet biological droplet; breathing through a surgical mask would make the area around intake wet with some human cells, making it a wonderful spot for survival of viruses; it basically makes it a prime collector surface. The mask itself is permeable and whatever viruses are collected on the outer layer thrive there unless the surface was strongly antiseptic (hint: it isn't). To be safe, you'd have to change it pretty often; surgeons moreover don't touch their masks while they are performing a surgery, you probably wouldn't have such limitations. "I have seen such a mask in a Hollywood movie, that means it must work."

COVID-19 family is also pretty agile:

"The analysis of 22 studies reveals that human coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus or endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV) can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019567012...

Good luck relying on the safety from wearing surgical masks! /s

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#232

Post by PeterisP » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:48 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #68

_2d30 wrote: post #13

I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. The US needs to invest in itself immediately to rebuild its lost manufacturing base. In economic terms, under certain definitions and assumptions that are typical under modern economics, a trade war such as…

No country has the manufacturing base to meet the demand for these masks under a pandemic, not even China. That’s what the article is all about. Your thoughts on the merits of trade wars are not applicable.

Some countries have a sufficient manufacturing base that allows them to spin up mass manufacturing of (for example) masks over a month or two.

You don't need to keep spare capacity for everything, but you need to have local capacity (not necessarily spare) for building custom manufacturing machines and staffing them, so that you can divert it to manufacture arbitrary physical goods if needed. Some countries can do that, most don't - but some of these could and should build that capacity.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#233

Post by bitL » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

nieksand wrote: post #230

bitL wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N95 is not a surgical mask. That one is a professional respirator. Yet infection can enter via eyes, so one has to wear airtight glasses as well to be sure. Surgical mask looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_mask There is no respirator embedded as you can see, it's just a simple piece of fabric. The point of my original reply was that we could reduce R0/transmission rate only if everybody had to we…

Which EU countries? I have not heard this before.

Both parts of the former Czechoslovakia come to mind:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Prague/comments/fkdxvj/face_masks_n...

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#234

Post by bluGill » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:52 AM UTC

Seanambers wrote: post #225

piva00 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Germany, stricter environmental regulations and a very healthy, highly developed manufacturing sector. They might not have all of their supply chain made locally but Germany makes the machines that makes machines so if needed they could ramp up their internal manufacturing quite quickly, doesn't seem to be the case for the US.

Well Germany has been so fortunate as to be a member of a currency union, where they are the leading industrial base, thus giving them a artificial low currency as an advantage as well. This helps manufacturing quit a bit.

The US is a currency union and has been for longer. Most people forget that state originally meant the same thing as country

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#235

Post by yourapostasy » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:54 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #68

_2d30 wrote: post #13

I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. The US needs to invest in itself immediately to rebuild its lost manufacturing base. In economic terms, under certain definitions and assumptions that are typical under modern economics, a trade war such as…

No country has the manufacturing base to meet the demand for these masks under a pandemic, not even China. That’s what the article is all about. Your thoughts on the merits of trade wars are not applicable.

> ...not even China...

For N95 masks as the article points out, yes, no one has the melt-blown fabric manufacturing machines that are a precursor.

However, if everyone around you wears surgical masks, then everyone is blocking ingesting about about 80% of particulate matter [1]. For an emergency like the pandemic, we're also interested in the masks blocking what wearers breathe out to surgical standards, what the masks were designed for. That's a "not letting perfect be the enemy of good" level of "good enough" if your alternative is letting front line healthcare staff go without melt-blown fabric filtering PPE because everyone is scrambling for P95 or P100 masks.

The US military establishment after the pandemic is controlled will hopefully be given a hand in determining precursor tech tree bottlenecks like the OP article pointed out, and have Congressional authorization to perform economic disaster preparedness within its scope. Stockpile and maintain sufficient operational skills alongside key equipment, so our disaster preparedness is better than "duck and cover" (some interesting questions behind that door).

Some modeling suggests we need a minimum 3 month lockdown in the US to cut deaths in half [2], 18 months (or however long it takes for critical mass of population to develop immunity or vaccinated immunity) to approach a semblance of status ante quo death rate. I wish they would put their modeling source and data onto Github (or Wolfram Alpha?), so others can work with the model (I'm interested in its backtest results from previous epidemics). If we lockdown for even 3 months, then that's GFC effects; 18 months is Great(er) Depression.

[1] https://fastlifehacks.com/n95-vs-ffp/

[2] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#236

Post by AdrianB1 » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #228

Seanambers wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Germany has been so fortunate as to be a member of a currency union, where they are the leading industrial base, thus giving them a artificial low currency as an advantage as well. This helps manufacturing quit a bit.

That's completely insignificant compared to having the dollar as the global currency in the oil trade. Countries that sell oil for dollar can only spend those dollars on American products. It's as if the USA produced all the oil in the world and sold it for profit. Meanwhile Germany's unfair advantage is that it's prices on products are slightly lower than they should be.

It is actually the other way around: this keeps the US dollar artificially high, hitting on exports, and it is completely not true that these countries can only spend dollars on American products: they can spend on anything they want, the dollar is just a currency, you can use it to buy products from Russia, China or Nigeria.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#237

Post by brigandish » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

hguant wrote: post #169

jdietrich wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have the workforce. That's the problem - you don't. By definition, the kind of efficient, highly-automated manufacturing you're thinking of doesn't need many unskilled or semi-skilled workers, but it does need skilled and experienced engineers and machinists. It needs a massive and complex ecosystem of suppliers and support. The depletion of America's industrial base has created a massive skills gap that would ta…

This reminds me of a conversation I had at a New Year's party not too long ago - a gentleman I'd never met before and I got to talking, and in the process of getting to know one another (however much you can know someone after 4-5 drinks at a black tie party you go to once a year), he bemoaned the issues he was having trying to open a US branch of his company. Apparently medium scale sheet metal forming operations in…

I got chatting to the bloke next to me on a long haul flight from the UK to Japan. He was going there to buy a printing machine (he was a printer) and when I asked why go all the way to Japan he told me that, basically, only Germany and Japan make printing machines any more. He even pointed out that the pulp he bought was from abroad.

I wonder if freight companies receive subsidies though - lots of airlines certainly get subsidies - that might change things in favour of more local producers. Maybe.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#238

Post by bluGill » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #42

est31 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now they probably have already exhausted/repurposed all the second hand manufacturing machines so they need new ones to add additional capacity. According to the article, the company building them needs months for a new one due to the precision requirements.

Even assuming it takes 5-6 months, I assume they did not start building new machines today. Starting late January puts the ramp up starting in ~3-4 months.

I would guess the machines are built one at a time to order. That would be typical for such things with small demand.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#239

Post by AdrianB1 » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 11:05 AM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #62

bamboozled wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “superpower” who can’t seem make enough masks to protect its own medical professionals from a pandemic. It’s an interesting situation.

Rome was a "superpower" militarily but it couldn't feed itself, and had to rely on grain from Egypt and the fertile crescent to feed its population..... Here we can't produce some basic silly things... as it is not that economical during normal times... Perhaps farming subsides are not a crazy type of idea after all.

At the time Rome was a military superpower and it did not have the capacity to feed itself, the agriculture was at a completely different level. Farming subsidies have no logical link to Rome 2000 years ago.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#240

Post by AdrianB1 » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 11:11 AM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #206

solatic wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. The economic benefits of globalized supply chains are real. The question is not whether or not supply chains should be globalized but how to ensure their safety in the event of a global disruption? It's days like these that I'm really sad that more Americans don't do military service. Ensuring the long-term viability of large, generally dormant stockpiles is the core competency of the military in peacetim…

> My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. Might be a good solution, but how about having some more generic production capacity instead that can adapt quickly to urgent needs? China is quickly convert…

It used to be the case in some countries; for example in my country the tobacco processing plants had the dual-purpose to build rifle ammo as most of the packing equipment used ~ 7.62 diameter. My cousin that worked in such a plant said it took less than 2 weeks for a full conversion. In this particular example there was no dormant capacity during peacetime, it was actively used on alternative production.