There were pictures all over Twitter of Chinese in big box stores on the West Coast buying up pallet loads of masks, gloves, sanitizer which were then shipped to China. Same thing happened in Australia.
The CCP knew how bad this was going to be and stripped the rest of the world of PPE.
We need a stockpile of this stuff to last at least a couple of months AND domestic manufacturing so we can quickly ramp up and replace from a RELIABLE source.
We also need to make sure that China is not our provider of PPE
Same with medicines
Have a contact at a local paint store who was noting Chinese were coming in a buying up any N-95 mask they could and were shipping them to China.
It’d be nice to have some “Reusable” mask (even if a filter needs to be changed) since there is a chance of these things happened again (with some totally different pandemic) and also the masks allegedly have limited shelf life (maybe the fastening straps should be separately attached so if they shrink they whole contraption isn’t wasted).
A reusable mask would require daily cleaning but so do bandannas.
A reusable mask would also provide some protection in case of petrochemical plant disasters, certain gas attacks, etc.