The "dubious" claim (I was imprecise and meant to credit it to the president's quote, not the "without replenishing it") was basically affirmed by your Politifact link.
More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.
> More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.
There's no point in further engaging with you if that's your take on the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2.
The presidents could not differ more in:
- lead time between inauguration and first epidemic reaching the USA (6 weeks versus 3 years)
- seriousness with which the presidential transition team took pandemic response
- the authority given to pandemic response (Obama made NSC responsible while Trump made HHS responsible)
- speed and intensity of initial response once the outbreak was identified
- empowerment medical professionals
- use of Defense Production Act
- treatment of WHO, CDC, and FDA as institutions
> There's no point in further engaging with you if that's your take on the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2.
"the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2" was not the topic of conversation. The topic of conversation was:
>>> If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks.
>> Those aren't the only options. Some mask manufacturers could scale up manufacturing as long as they had a medium/long term contract to make the investment worth it. The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishing it (dubious claim), so there was exactly zero reason for this[1] to happen.
You are now expanding the scope of your original argument. Before we do that, can we finish with your first point?
Did the Obama administration refill the inventory of masks after they were drawn down, or not? My reading of the evidence is that they did not, does your reading leave you with a different conclusion, are you maybe referring to different evidence than what I posted above?
More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2020/04/02/trump...