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Cyran on 05 April 2020
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NightlyPoe said:
Jaicee said:

We don't have spare months for the market economy to voluntarily scale up production of medical necessities and hospital construction. In "a matter of months", there will have been millions of Americans infected and God knows how many deaths. This is the most serious pandemic we've faced in a century. Covid-19 is already the third leading cause of death in America and is expected to bypass the daily death toll of cancer and heart disease to become #1 by the middle of the month. The only way to prevent a bloodbath of millions in this country is to get serious right now. The market economy has not and will not deliver the necessary results in a timely manner.

This, a genuine crisis, is no time for multicultural individualism. At a time like this, relying on markets and self-help will literally kill us. It is time for the establishment of a national culture to meet this crisis head-on. Only with that can we make it out of this alive, as in without millions of deaths.

Properly done, we should be targeting the specific companies in the best position to ramp up production to the scale we need with as much speed as possible.  Which, I assume, is exactly what everyone is doing.

I agree with NightlyPoe on the production side.  What not being done that should of been done from the start is nationalizing the Supply chain.  It ridiculous that every state is out there trying to buy equipment and competing with each other.  The Federal government should of figured out everything available and then put the correct general or admiral in charge of making sure the equipment get to the locations that need it most base on best available data.  Something that Military can do quite well and have a lot of experience doing around the world.

Also supplies within the USA can be moved from place to place quite quickly.  If am willing to pay enough I could have something over nighted from west coast to east coast. 

I bring this up to point out that for example at it peak new York might need 150k ventilators and Florida 100k but there peaks wont be at the same time.  You can put a quartermaster at every hospital in USA monitoring demand.  So if you see New York demand start going down and Florida going up you can quickly move the ventilators no longer being used in New York to Florida.  You can do this nation wide.

Right now you may have states offering to help other state but this is a horrible inefficient way to move around resources and should be done at the national level.  Supply should be driven by where those supplies can save the most lives at any given time and not by which state can negotiate the best for supplies.

This is logistics 101 stuff.  It would be 1000% times easier with proper testing so we had the data to pin point exactly where stuff should go but even without we could be doing way better then we are with putting the correct people in charge of supply chain management.  As we currently stand there probably location with excess supply and places with way to few.  A state with excess not going to offer it to other states because they know eventually it could get bad in there state and they will need it.  If you nationalize the supply chain with competent people in charge you can take the supplies to places that need it now and the state you taking it from could feel safe when the times comes that they need it the supplies will be moved there.