Reshoring has become a rallying cry for both Republicans and Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. At the Republican National Convention in August, Trump stood before the White House and declared, “Over the next four years, we will make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world. We will … bring home our medical supply chains, and we will end our reliance on China once and for all.” Similarly, Democratic nominee Joe Biden rolled out a plan to invest $700 billion to bolster U.S. manufacturing and purchase domestically made goods. Heading into winter, the government now needs hundreds of millions of needles and syringes to vaccinate the nation, items Peter Navarro warned earlier this year were in short supply. “We may find ourselves in a situation where we have enough vaccine but no way to deliver all of it,” he said in a February memo to the White House coronavirus task force. Now the Trump administration says needles and syringes are on order, but details of the contracts are shrouded in secrecy. the largest has gone to a company making a device that has not yet been cleared by the FDA, according to its own website. Another firm only incorporated in May, and has never before had a government contract nor imported needles and syringes. A third contractor in August reported disruptions in its overseas supply chain. Last week, the department of Health and Human Services refused to say if — or how many — needles and syringes have been delivered, claiming that information is “business sensitive.” Several contractors said the government has forbidden them from disclosing any information, even if they want to.... Each week the CDC receives forecasts of national COVID-19 deaths for the coming month from about 40 different expert modeling groups. The agency uses those to create a national ensemble forecast. To date, the predictions of total deaths keep going up, each dot on the graph a life, a family, a community.
Juliet Linderman and Martha Mendoza, 'US medical supply chains failed, and COVID deaths followed', Associated Press
