CORONAVIRUS
ECONOMY
verything changed for abdul
Rashid Dadabhoy on March 17. He heard
that California’s Orange County was gear-
ing up to ban public gatherings and im-
pose restrictions on nonessential busi-
nesses l ike his T-shirt company, Bayside
Apparel and Headwear, in order to stop t he s pread
of c oronavirus. But then Dadabhoy turned on CNN
and saw doctors saying they didn’t have enough per-
sonal p rotective equipment to keep themselves s afe
while treating patients.
“I have all these employees,” Dadabhoy recalls
thinking to himself. “I’ve got to do something.”
Within a day, the company had a face-mask proto-
type. Soon it was aiming to produce 100,000 masks
per week. The masks are not yet medical-grade, but
they’re better than nothing, and Bayside is donating
them to hospitals that need them.
From underwear manufacturers to haute couture
brands, apparel companies a cross the country have
pivoted to help fill the need for medical gear. A global
effort is under way t o ramp up production of crucial
supplies. Breweries and perfume factories are mak-
ing hand sanitizer. Local businesses that own 3-D
printers a re fabricating face shields. Dadabhoy has
ordered medical-grade fabric in order to j oin Hanes
and Fruit of the Loom in manufacturing face masks
that meet federal contracting standards.
This vast struggle reflects the best of American
ingenuity, as former competitors put profit aside
to work together in the national interest. But the
ground-up response also underscores the lack of fed-
eral coordination a mid an urgent crisis. More than
two months after the COVID-19 epidemic arrived
in the U.S., the Trump Administration has no uni-
fied national strategy to get vital supplies into the
hands o f f rontline health workers. Companies h op-
ing to contribute their efforts face a disorganized
fe deral process that is riddled with bottlenecks a nd
hampered by unclear l ines o f a uthority. And as the
disease’s s pread accelerates in the coming weeks,
deepening shortages of equipment from masks to
ventilators are becoming a matter of life a nd d eath.A chorus of politicians, state government offi-
cials and medical experts are pleading with President
Trump to use his authority under the Defe nse Pro-
duction Act (DPA) to command U.S. private pro-
duction c apacity t o manufacture medical s upplies.
Trump invoked the act on March 18, but he later cast
it a s a n u nnecessary government intrusion, and the
Administration has yet to harness the act’s full pow-
ers to nationalize production lines.
Without the federal government at the c ontrols,
market forces are often making the situation worse.
Governors from the hardest-hit states say they’re
locked in counterproductive bidding wars to acquire
supplies f rom distributors. New York Governor An-
drew Cuomo said the state is paying $7 for masks
that once cost 85¢. “The President says it’s a war,”
Cuomo said. “Well, act like it’s a war.”The s horTage of crucial supplies should be
no s urprise. The Department of Health and Human
Services warned that the U.S. would need roughly
3.5 billion masks to combat the pandemic. “If we had
started this in January, when we became aware of
this, instead of futzing around for two months, we
would be in a much better position,” says a former
Commerce Department official.
The American Hospital Association, American
Medical Association and American Nurs es Associa-
tion jointly wrote a letter March 21 to Trump, urg-
ing h im to use the DPA to produce the supplies t hat
“all frontline providers so desperately need.” In New
York, which has become the epicenter of the outbreak
in the U.S., Cuomo says 30,000 additional ventilators
are needed to treat the crush of severely i ll p atients.
The state’s rate of new infections was doubling every
three days. “I do not for the life of me understand
the reluctance to use the federal Defense Production
Act,” Cuomo said March 24.
Signed by President Harry Truman in 1 950, the
statute sought to update the War Powers Acts of
World War II for the modern era. Its sweeping author-
ities a llow t he President t o force businesses t o a ccept
and prioritize government contracts during naturalBusinesses s cramble to fill critical supply s hortages—
and s earch for guidance from the feds
BY CHARLOTTE ALTER AND W.J. HENNIGANINTO THE
BREACH
CORONAVIRUS
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