Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were only about 10 U.S. manufacturers of the N95 respirators that would soon become essential to virus protection. To meet that rising need, dozens of businesses began making respirators. However, now that the need is gone, many of those same businesses may be facing shutdowns or significant cutbacks.
At the height of the pandemic, dozens of U.S. businesses underwent the complicated process of becoming certified and able to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE) lime N95s. At least some of those businesses underwent this change without government assistance.
Now that the vaccine effort is well underway and with an influx of cheaper Chinese-made N95s, these newly-minted PPE manufacturers are now predicting they'll need to completely shutter their plants.
"Let me put this in perspective: We have 28 members who are going to go out of business in the next 60 to 90 days, and when they go out of business, it's not like we turn off the lights and mothball these machines," Lloyd Armbrust, CEO of Armbrust American, said of the 28-member manufacturer's group American Mask Manufacturer's Association. "We send them to the dump. That capacity that we created goes away."
Before these businesses made the switch, just 10% of N95 respirators used in the U.S. were made here, with the other 90% being primarily comprised of Chinese-made masks. When the pandemic hit, China nationalized its mask manufacturing, essentially cutting off America's N95 supply entirely.
In a letter to President Joe Biden asking for government assistance, a group of mask manufacturers said that both manufacturing masks and providing the funding they now need are matters of "not only national security but of national pride."
This isn't the first time that domestic mask manufacturers have been left out to dry following a health crisis. In 2009, production was increased to meet the demand from H1N1. After the crisis went away, the demand and the jobs created to fill that demand both went away, too.
The same thing is happening again, with the added pressure of Chinese imports. In China, the cost of manufacturing a mask can be as much as three times cheaper compared to the U.S.
However, faced with the demand from desperate health care workers, U.S. manufacturers that had been around during the H1N1 era once again stepped forward.
"I actually had people crying when I would talk to them on the phone that they didn't know what to do - women doctors who were pregnant and they weren't being provided any protection," Susanne Gerson, executive vice president of Louis M. Gerson Co., told NPR.
While some feel that the sacrifices these manufacturers are making for the sake of the country aren't right, others feel it's just another part of a capitalistic system.
"I made a stupid decision, because I'm an entrepreneur and I cared about our country and bringing this strategic manufacturing back," Armbrust told NPR. "A bunch of people made bad decisions personally to do something that was right at the time, and that to me is the American spirit."
American spirit or not, many experts blame the disastrous supply issues at the beginning of the pandemic on poor planning by the government, not poor choices by manufacturers.
For its part, the White House says it is working to improve the U.S. strategy for creating a resilient pandemic supply chain, including a $10 billion investment in manufacturing.