I was told there was a presumptive positive case in Abilene of an individual who traveled overseas. He recovered and is supposedly self quarantining at home.

VaultingChemist said:

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I was told there was a presumptive positive case in Abilene of an individual who traveled overseas. He recovered and is supposedly self quarantining at home.

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Interesting. Hadn't heard that.

jagvocate said:

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A lot of factors

Root cause is losing control of our supply chain and not seeing a pandemic as a potential worth stocking up for.

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Can't star this enough! Very disappointed in the healthcare supply chain right now. There are things you can buy just in time. Pandemic supplies are not one of them and it's not the feds job to do it for you.

AgLiving06 said:

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The problem as I understand it is not the US, but China (once again).

The 3M factor that makes the masks is in China and guess who is taking the entire supply of masks being produced??

What this really will be is a wake up call that we cannot trust the enemy to be our main supplier of our basic necessities.

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I think we all agree more needs to be made in the US. But I still struggle with the notion that the CDC or some Govt entity needs to be responsible...where does it end? An extra 6 months of gloves...for whom? Every Dr.s office in the US? This is the problem when gov't makes decisions impacting free market.
"Made in America" needs to be the slogan we see more of in the future.

AgLiving06 said:

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The problem as I understand it is not the US, but China (once again).

The 3M factor that makes the masks is in China and guess who is taking the entire supply of masks being produced??

What this really will be is a wake up call that we cannot trust the enemy to be our main supplier of our basic necessities.

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3M has plants dispersed globally for most of its products including plants designated for healthcare products. Additionally they make masks for industrial products in several us plants. They've stated a 400m unit output per year in the US.

China may have hoarded masks but we should have been in front of this imo.

This private company will be selling at home test kits starting on March 23

https://www.everlywell.com/blog/news-and-info/our-commitment-to-fighting-covid-19/

Yesterday morning on the news, I saw a hospital administrator say that there were going through as much PPE in a week as they usually go through in 6 months. Hard to plan for that kind of usage spike.

jftx04 said:

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jagvocate said:

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A lot of factors

Root cause is losing control of our supply chain and not seeing a pandemic as a potential worth stocking up for.

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Curious as to what you would have stocked up for an unknown virus? Test kits...for something that wasn't known? Medicine for something there is no vaccine for?
Im curious as to how you would have run things differently.

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SARS and MERS have been health issues for the last 20 years. We've known that this type of virus could cause a pandemic for quite some time. So why didn't we do anything? Well, those two viruses had different types of transmission that could be easily stopped (no shedding before symptoms), so they burned out and we forgot about them. The money then died up to study them and make test kits or make a vaccine, because why should we care if they are not a current health issue right? In the early 2000s, labs were studying them and developing vaccines but they had to stop once the public and money stopped caring. We didn't have the foresight to continue. Of course now we wish we did and had spent some money on that insurance, because the few millions we could have spent on vaccine or treatment development would be small compared to the billions and trillions of dollars in damages to the country this outbreak will have caused.

But when it came time to cut costs, studying the viruses that weren't current health threats were the first to be cut. That left is with no insurance and our pants down. Now we have to take it.

We had 10-15 years to be prepared, but our government and health officials didn't listen.

Cool. said:

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This private company will be selling at home test kits starting on March 23

https://www.everlywell.com/blog/news-and-info/our-commitment-to-fighting-covid-19/

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>90% of the people that do this won't take the sample properly.

Nice little $$$ grab and waste of resources.

wildcat08 said:

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Have a family member in Abilene who has some upper respiratory issuescough, congestion, etc. She went to the doctor today. The office where she was had no masks, so the doctor she saw didn't examine her, just asked some questions from across the room. He told her that Abilene had so few tests, they couldn't test her for the virus. He sent her back home and told her to self-quarantine for 14 days.

I think she probably just has some seasonal upper respiratory stuff, but her experience pointed to the issue of overwhelming the system we've heard so much aboutrunning out of protective gear and limited tests available.

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Where are all these new test kits going? I keep hearing about hospitals having no test kits or very short supply.

The key to all of this is fixing the supply chain, we need to be manufacturing critical medical supplies and drugs here in the US not some foreign country. I think this tragic virus epidemic will open the public's eyes as to what's needed, can we count on our politicians to fix it is probably the biggest issue

AgLiving06 said:

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The problem as I understand it is not the US, but China (once again).

The 3M factor that makes the masks is in China and guess who is taking the entire supply of masks being produced??

What this really will be is a wake up call that we cannot trust the enemy to be our main supplier of our basic necessities.

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The 3M plant is in South Dakota (Aberdeen if I remember the local MN news broadcasts correctly), not China. We (as a country) should have been ramping up production a month or two ago.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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jagvocate said:

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A lot of factors

Root cause is losing control of our supply chain and not seeing a pandemic as a potential worth stocking up for.

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Agreed. When 'just in time' inventory goes wrong.

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As a purchaser I ****ing hate JIT inventory.

AgResearch said:

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Cool. said:

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This private company will be selling at home test kits starting on March 23

https://www.everlywell.com/blog/news-and-info/our-commitment-to-fighting-covid-19/

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>90% of the people that do this won't take the sample properly.

Nice little $$$ grab and waste of resources.

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Yep. Plus, considering their food sensitivity testing is bull**** to begin with, which is what they advertise all over the tv, presenting it to consumers as fact and better than what their doctors do. Color me skeptical regarding this test.

Concept of fear mongering goes right over the heads of all the lemmings until they reach the cliff.

jenn96 said:

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Masks, gloves, swabs. I understand if a doctors office doesn't want to carry 6 months extra inventory but the CDC should have some type of strategic stockpile of basic safety gear.

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I'm with you on the basic PPE, since that's generalizable, but it doesn't cover as many items as you'd think.

As far as I know, we do keep massive glove inventories on hand. They have a relatively good shelf life (~2/3/4 years depending on storage conditions and what material they're made of), and are compact. I haven't heard of glove shortages yet, but that's just my personal experience.

We do stockpile things that we can. And most clinics and labs (mine included) keep multiple months worth of "normal" inventory on hand. People are burning through many months worth of protective equipment inventory every few days. I hope we figure out a solution to prevent running into supply shortages so seemingly early in the process for the future.

I have no clue on the masks. If I had to take a wild ass guess it would be that public panic buying created an artificial shortage, which is an argument for government stockpiling somewhere. You'll have just as many people arguing that it's a waste of money and space blah blah.

One of the challenges I face with stockpiling PPE is it's very bulky. So keeping lots of local stock on hand requires a massive amount of space that most clinics and labs don't have access to.

Take swabs as an example of something seemingly "simple" to stockpile. Unfortunately, it isn't possible. What length? What stem material, diameter, rigidity, etc..? What tip length, material, diameter, etc..? What downstream chemical compatibilities? Each body site and intended downstream test requires a different combination of those characteristics.

Pretty much all other downstream reagents either have very short shelf lives, require controlled cold storage at all times (obviously very expensive), and are specific for the exact kind of test, pathogen, appropriate sampling site for the test, etc... and unfortunately can't be known in advance.

fullback44 said:

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The key to all of this is fixing the supply chain, we need to be manufacturing critical medical supplies and drugs here in the US not some foreign country. I think this tragic virus epidemic will open the public's eyes as to what's needed, can we count on our politicians to fix it is probably the biggest issue

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Just curios but what would you desire the government to do to fix your perceived problem?

They need to bring pharma back to the US...get rid of any unnecessary regulations that may have driven them away. Give them tax breaks to bring the plants back.. what ever it takes. There is a reason the US is number one in chemical plants around the world.. we have the oil and we give them tax breaks when installing the plants.

fullback44 said:

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They need to bring pharma back to the US...get rid of any unnecessary regulations that may have driven them away. Give them tax breaks to bring the plants back.. what ever it takes. There is a reason the US is number one in chemical plants around the world.. we have the oil and we give them tax breaks when installing the plants.

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The same FDA regs that apply here, apply in China. If a drug substance or active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) results in drug product here in the US, it falls under FDA and can be audited by FDA. There may be some environmental ones where US may implement it one way while China may say the river upstream of the farming village is cool. Cost of labor is biggest difference.