Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves • Hacker News Board

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#91

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #78

trebligdivad wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have been a bargain if you could have done it during peak Covid. Having the capability to make them is worth a lot in resilience.

Who’s paying to bring online a factory that sites idle just in case? Are you also paying workers to sit there idle?

The logical thing is that the government buys them continually at the higher price which justifies the existence of the factory with the requirement that it is made here and if this is not sufficient motivation you make buying something more buying something profitable contingent

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#92

Post by wrs » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #86

stingraycharles wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The later form was part of the design from the beginning: relying on imports for something this critical in times of an epidemic was a supply chain risk. It was never intended to compete in terms of pricing. It baffles me that this wasn’t made more explicit? That seems to be the root cause of the failure.

Once the epidemic was over, stakeholders forgot about the original motives.

Also, the stakeholders decided the epidemic was a hoax in the first place.

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#93

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

roysting wrote: post #68

rileymat2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so simple? Instead of investing billions, perhaps a stockpile is a better strategy.

That would be a good thing for you to research to build an understanding for the scale of what you are simplifying. Here's a start; just alone during a rather non-pandemic of 2020-2022 the USA alone used about 1.8 billion, with a B, gloves per week ... week.

[deleted]

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#94

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #87

wbl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or stockpile a two year supply. You can get a lot with a billion dollars.

Stockpiles of masks and gloves where maintained in Canada, and I believe the US after SARS. But a year before COVID, these warehouses were shut down, as the stockpiles were old, and needed a refresh, and politicians didnt see the need to spend tens of millions on new stockpiles. The has happened several times over the last 100 years.

Republicans didn't see the need to be precise

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#95

Post by BobaFloutist » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #88

philipallstar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to optimise for the market. The market is the optimising machine. Get in its way with slow regulators or subsidies or bailouts and you get all the problems.

Markets optimize for the current gradient, not for the local maxima Markets will make you climb a hill ignoring it ends on a cliff end

Sounds like a local maximum to me. Did you maybe mean a global maximum?

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#96

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

cyberge99 wrote: post #30

Needs an orthogonal approach. Perhaps Elmer's glue that physician’s can dip their hands in and rinse off?

Gloves are sterile wouldn't this tend to embed whatever is on the hands in the surface as it dries?

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#97

Post by rileymat2 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

roysting wrote: post #68

rileymat2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so simple? Instead of investing billions, perhaps a stockpile is a better strategy.

That would be a good thing for you to research to build an understanding for the scale of what you are simplifying. Here's a start; just alone during a rather non-pandemic of 2020-2022 the USA alone used about 1.8 billion, with a B, gloves per week ... week.

So 1 billion dollars buys about 8 billion gloves? Or about 4 weeks? So for 12 billion dollars that's a years slack?

I am not sure what you are getting at, continuously spending money on cost ineffective gloves just in case there is a problem sometime, including the upfront investment.

The scale of the storage? We have 6000 hospitals in the US. which would have to store about 2 million gloves a piece if you decentralized it. The storage space would be about 2 10x10x10 cubes in each location, probably varying dramatically by hospital size. Of course that is just proper hospitals, we have many many more medical facilities that use them. I don't see storage being a problem.

So what is the scale we are talking here? A complete 6 month supply would be half the cost, which still seems excessive. And this is a pandemic scenario we are talking about that uses a lot of gloves, not a national security concern where we would not have that much additional use.

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#98

Post by biophysboy » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

fkdk wrote: post #33

cyberge99 wrote: post #30

Needs an orthogonal approach. Perhaps Elmer's glue that physician’s can dip their hands in and rinse off?

Some of my early research (elementary school) suggested that certain glues can form a peelable, skin-like layer. Maybe that could be a promising way forward?

I did the same research in elementary school! My parents were my seed investors. They asked for 25% of equity - all I ended up giving them was some collectible artwork for the fridge.

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#99

Post by reactordev » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #81

reactordev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One sounds incapable from a skill perspective, the other is incapable from a market perspective. I’ll take the later over the former any day.

Over time, the latter becomes the former.

Only for a time until the market conditions improve. Humans are incredibly talented and we have a knack for picking up skills.

Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

#100

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #40

vrganj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta optimize everything for the market man! It's magic! Everything will work out if we only make number go up! Who cares about silly stuff like health emergencies, the climate catastrophe or war. Number must go up!

You don't need to optimise for the market. The market is the optimising machine. Get in its way with slow regulators or subsidies or bailouts and you get all the problems.

Why would this even be so. It's not magic it's just people doing stupid people things often to maximize short term factors. It only gets long-term planning insofar as embedded agents do. One of the things agents do is use incentives to inspire behaviour that is conta individuals short term incentives to achieve behaviour that contributes to long-term success.

Not only are many individual agents aligned with short term interests they often either can't because they will be pushed out by short term thinkers or literally benefit from net harm to all. America mostly being composed of the rich not the masses voting with their wallets.