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Why N95 masks are hard to make

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Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#241

Post by yourapostasy »

ckcheng wrote: post #198
jhpriestley wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockpiling essential medical equipment sounds a lot cheaper than autarky.

Stockpiling is good as part of the preparation but isn't enough. e.g. "Five months worth of supplies were used by one hospital in six days" [1] How's any country supposed to stockpile enough at that rate? And stockpiles require upkeep and evergreening. Otherwise things like masks eventually expire [2]. Upkeep costs money too. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... [2] https://nationalpost…

Once you go down this analysis rabbit hole, I believe the rational conclusion is to "stockpile" manufacturing capacity by keeping manufacturing under physical domestic control.

Otherwise you're always fighting the last war. Today it is a respiratory-oriented weakness in our supply chain. Tomorrow it could be fungal spores; do we have enough domestic manufacturing capacity to create fungicides at pandemic scale?

Another mitigation option is standardized international cooperation and automated data interchange on international acute public health matters when an issue rises to just the regional level. Improving the level of integrated data sharing in this age of data mining would accelerate research and development of responses. I was hopeful that a standardized data representation format already existed, and highly-granular patient data from around the world would be available to the entire public (not just institutions) to sift through. Instead, we're still exchanging data through papers. The source code and raw data of models or clinical trial analyses are not published. We do have genome sequences available publicly, which helps, though.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#242

Post by nabla9 »

_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…

It's not true that US or any other developed country have lost their manufacturing base. The rest of the economy has grown faster than manufacturing.

Developed countries have moved into high-tech, high productivity, more capital intensive manufacturing with complex supply chains. If you want to bring back low productivity products into your country, you must accept wage decline, slower growth and lowering quality of life.

You can prepare for emergencies using other means and using relatively small adjustments. Post-industrial societies have higher productivity than industrial societies. Turning the clock back is not a good idea.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#243

Post by jacobush »

jdietrich wrote: post #201
Paperweight wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly-automated, "clean" manufacturing is all well and good for billion-dollar highly-capitalized, politically-sheltered megafactories, but what about the other 90% of manufacturers? Manufacturing is a dirty, dangerous, manual business. I think the small guys will tell you that environmental regulations killed manufacturing in the west, not labour costs. We've been living in lala land with it all offshore, out of si…

>Manufacturing is a dirty, dangerous, manual business. It can be, but it can also be clean, safe and highly automated. Fly-by-night operators that run dirty and dangerous shops are not the basis of a sustainable manufacturing economy. China is just damned good at manufacturing. They have everything that is needed - skills, capital, logistics - at an immense scale. They don't offer a cheap but inferior substitute for…

And now the US is run by people who know how to bully and hustle.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#244

Post by AdrianB1 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #55
_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…

Does one of the n95 cotton candy machines even exist in the US? I would love to see the specs for them made free and open so anyone could attempt to produce one and then have it vetted. Contributing to e.g. firmware code for the thing is like the only meaningful thing I could put my skills towards in this epidemic. It would be an honor to do so.

The problem is not the specs and firmware code with these machines, it is the precision and tuning it to get good quality output. In the physical world, working with sub-micron polymer products is not something you solve with software. They wrote in the article about some challenges, none is trivial and none is due to hiding the specs or writing bad code.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#245

Post by jacobush »

bluGill wrote: post #234
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.

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

I agree on your first point, but not the etymology. Germany has a long federal history. The word "state" has been a little ambiguous for a long time.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#246

Post by non-entity »

jplayer01 wrote: post #209
ardit33 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Am I taking crazy pills? The US and Europe subsidize their agricultural industries heavily and have done so for decades. They're fully or largely capable of feeding themselves - and yes, precisely because these places decided that food is a significant factor for the stability of a country and a national security issue. Hell, people bitch and moan about how agriculture gets so many subisidies (corn in the US? anythin…

I dont think the comment you're replying to was saying the US isnincaphle of feeding itself, but trying to make a comparison to past empires which had outsourced parts of their economies to foreign powers

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#247

Post by AdrianB1 »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #136
_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…

When you say that the US needs to "invest in itself", what you really mean is that the US needs to divert investments from industries in which it has a comparative advantage into industries that developing countries have a comparative advantage in.

You can die in a pandemic still singing the song about the "comparative advantage". Not to mention that there is no comparative advantage when you ignore the buzzwords and actually do the comparison seriously.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#248

Post by wolfgke »

piva00 wrote: post #199
Paperweight wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly-automated, "clean" manufacturing is all well and good for billion-dollar highly-capitalized, politically-sheltered megafactories, but what about the other 90% of manufacturers? Manufacturing is a dirty, dangerous, manual business. I think the small guys will tell you that environmental regulations killed manufacturing in the west, not labour costs. We've been living in lala land with it all offshore, out of si…

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.

Many Germans say that the fact that manufacturing it still rather strong in Germany is only a carryover from the decaying momentum of a much more glorious past (Wirtschaftswunder (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wirtschaftswunder...).

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#249

Post by AdrianB1 »

stubish wrote: post #43
koolba wrote: post #4

> China now makes 200 million face masks a day — more than twenty times the amount it made at the start of February. That’s an insane number of masks. Does one in seven Chinese wear a fresh one every day ? Is this gonna be the new normal?

Only 600,000 of those are N95 standard, suitable for health care and using the special fabric in short supply. Mask wear in Asia is common, for smog, smoke and controlling flu. The cheap ones don't last long, and often replaced instead of put through the wash. Common mask usage requires use of cheaper, more comfortable masks rather than the health care certified ones.

Are the regular masks (not N95) efficient at all for smog and smoke? I think they are just paper masks stopping only large particles.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#250

Post by megous »

_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…

It also shows that starting trade wars is not a great idea, if you may need the other country's resources in unforeseen future emergencies.
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