I hope companies step up and create surgical masks. It's such a basic item, but we don't have enough. Forget about guns, it's like asking troops to fight without shoes.
Unfortunately, in the past when local companies did that they were punished because the demand evaporated and the government wasn't willing to keep buying and stockpile. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/8113874... mentions how one manufacturer kept trying to get the government to help maintain supply, but they didn't. Now all the local manufacturers are scrambling and the US stockpiles are insufficient.
A one-time order isn't what that company is looking for. They're only responding to hospitals that sign onto a five-year contract, for example. Likely the only way to get to the front of the line with him now is to have an authorized 10-year contract signed by the board of directors with a capped total, with an attached note, "fill in your price, up to this amount", handed over face-to-face by the customer's CEO stepping into the factory.
Even that isn't really sufficient. Looking at the capex depreciation table [1], he'll only depreciate the new machinery in five years, and likely still be paying a note on it. Commercial industrial/flex space leases in the DFW area where he's near are typically around 3-5 years. After all is said and done, he's likely roughly breaking even, and not netting a giant personal profit at the other end.
He needs the Federal and state governments committing to evergreen disaster preparedness on a decades-long timescale. That takes much more than stockpiling.
