āDear Mr. President, The purpose of this letter is to make your office aware of a little-known national security threat.ā The year was 2010. The president was Barack Obama. The letter writer was Mike Bowen, a Fort Worth, Texas, medical mask maker on the verge of bankruptcy after rapidly ramping up his factory to supply enough masks for the H1N1 flu just a year before. āThe people that weād hired, these hundreds of people that step in to save the United States, to save America. They were rewarded by getting in an unemployment line. I lost everything that I owned. Literally hocked the farm,ā said Bowenās business partner, Dan Reese. His retirement account had just $72, he said. The story of their company, Prestige Ameritech, explains why the U.S. has failed to maintain a robust domestic medical supply manufacturing base. Bowen and Reese had worked for the mask maker Technol, which until the 1990s made 87% of the surgical masks in the U.S. In 1997, Kimberly Clark bought Technol, and moved manufacturing to Mexico. Around the same time, other American mask makers shuttered their U.S. factories, moving mostly to China. Reese and Bowen bought the now-vacant Texas factory. But within 10 years, 90% of U.S. medical masks were being made overseas. Every year, Prestige Ameritech asked the Defense Department to buy their masks, citing the Berry Amendment that dictates the military buy U.S.-made apparel. In response, the Defense Department told them their masks arenāt apparel. āYear after year after year after year after year, up to and including the last bid. It was unbelievable,ā said Reese. In 2014, a confidential presentation by Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) warned that the U.S. supply of medical masks was ānearly exhaustedā and that 5.3 billion would be needed in a pandemic.
Juliet Linderman and Martha Mendoza, 'US medical supply chains failed, and COVID deaths followed', Associated Press
