This is a story of staggering, incomprehensible incompetence. In the early days of the coronavirus, the nation’s only manufacturer of the high-quality N-95 face masks used by medical professionals offered to produce millions of them but was turned down by high-level federal officials.
It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer.
“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.
Bowen persisted.
“We are the last major domestic mask company,” he wrote on Jan. 23. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.”
In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.
Bowen’s overture was described briefly in an 89-page whistleblower complaint filed this week by Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
Bright alleges he was retaliated against by Kadlec and other officials — including being reassigned to a lesser post — because he tried to “prioritize science and safety over political expediency.” HHS has disputed his allegations.
Emails show Bright pressed Kadlec and other agency leaders on the issue of mask shortages — and Bowen’s proposal specifically — to no avail. On Jan. 26, Bright wrote to a deputy that Bowen’s warnings “seem to be falling on deaf ears.”
That day, Bowen sent Bright a more direct warning.
“ U.S. mask supply is at imminent risk,” he wrote. “Rick, I think we’re in deep s—,” he wrote a day later.
The story of Bowen’s offer illustrates a missed opportunity in the early days of the pandemic, one laid out in Bright’s whistleblower complaint, interviews with Bowen and emails provided by both men.
Within weeks, a shortage of masks was endangering health-care workers in hard-hit areas across the country, and the Trump administration was scrambling to buy more masks — sometimes placing bulk orders with third-party distributors for many times the standard price. President Trump came under pressure to use extraordinary government powers to force private industry to ramp up production.
In a statement, White House economic adviser and coronavirus task force member Peter Navarro said: “The company was just extremely difficult to work and communicate with. This was in sharp contrast to groups like the National Council of Textile Organizations and companies like Honeywell and Parkdale Mills, which have helped America very rapidly build up cost effective domestic mask capacity measuring in the hundreds of millions.”
Carol Danko, an HHS spokeswoman, declined to comment on the offer by Bowen and other allegations raised in the whistleblower complaint. Wolf also declined to comment on the whistleblower complaint.
A senior U.S. government official with knowledge of the offer said Bowen, 62, has a “legitimate beef.” “He was prescient, really,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. “But the reality is [HHS] didn’t have the money to do it at that time.”
Another HHS official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “There is a process for putting out contracts. It wasn’t as fast as anyone wanted it to be.”
A voice in the wilderness
Two decades ago, the low-slung factory in Texas was part of a supply conglomerate that produced almost 9 in 10 medical and surgical masks used in the United States.
Bowen was a new product specialist at the plant back then, and he watched as industry consolidations and outsourcing shifted control of the plant from Tecnol Medical Products to Kimberly-Clark and then shuttered it altogether. In less than a decade, almost 90 percent of all U.S. mask production had moved out of the country, according to government reports at the time.
Bowen and Dan Reese, a former executive at Tecnol, went into business together in 2005 and eventually bought the plant, believing a market remained for a dedicated domestic manufacturer of protective gear.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress appropriated $6 billion to buy antidotes to bioweapons and the medical supplies the country would need in public health disasters. An obscure new government organization called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, was among the agencies purchasing material for what would become the Strategic National Stockpile.
Bowen began studying BARDA, attending its industry conferences and searching for a way in to press his case.
In the parlance of BARDA, Bowen was seeking a “warm base” contract. The government would pay a premium to have masks manufactured domestically, but his company would keep its extra factory lines in working order, meaning production could be ramped up in an emergency.
Bowen said he soon concluded that BARDA’s focus was trained elsewhere, on billion-dollar deals to induce manufacturing of vaccines for the most exotic disasters, such as weaponized attacks with anthrax or smallpox.
Still, as Bowen moved down the supply chain, appealing directly to hospitals to buy his domestic-made masks, his sales pitch often ended with a plea to call BARDA.
Bowen often carried PowerPoint slides from a 2007 presentation by BARDA and its parent division at HHS, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. One had a table showing that, in the event of a pandemic, the country would need 5.3 billion N95 respirator masks, 50 times more than the number in the stockpile. The presentation concluded: “Industrial surge capacity of [respiratory protection devices] will not be able to meet need and supplies will be short during a pandemic.”
Bowen said he felt like a voice in the wilderness. “The world just looked at me as a mask salesman who was saying the sky was falling,” he said, “and they would say, ‘Your competitors aren’t saying that in China.’ ”
After Trump’s election, Bowen hoped the new president’s America-first mentality might trickle down to operations like his. He wrote a letter to Trump and addressed it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: “90% of the United States protective mask supply is currently FOREIGN MADE!” it began. “
I didn’t think Trump would read it, but I thought someone would and take note,” Bowen said.
He also called Bright, who had been appointed to lead BARDA just before Trump took office. “In 14 years of doing this, there have been maybe four people in government who I felt like really understood this issue,” Bowen said. “Rick was one of them.”
In Trump’s first year, however, Bowen grew newly disillusioned. During a week that the White House touted its “Buy American, Hire American” initiative, Bowen lost a military contract worth up to $1 million, to a supplier that would make many of the masks in Mexico, he said.
“Shame on the Department of Defense! One of these days the US military will need America’s manufacturers to help win another war or fight another pandemic — and they will not exist,” Bowen wrote on Aug. 17, 2017, to Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Clark, a senior official with the Pentagon’s Defense Health Agency.
Clark, who retired last year, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Proposal to produce goes nowhere
For Bowen, the first signs of trouble came in mid-January. Online orders through his company’s website, typically totaling maybe $2,000 a year and accounting for only a fraction of his business, suddenly skyrocketed to almost $700,000 in a few days.
On Jan. 20, Bowen also fielded a call from the Department of Homeland Security, urgently seeking masks for airport screeners. Bowen said he did not have masks in stock to fill the order, but the call led him to contact Bright to tell him about the surge in demand for masks. “Is this virus going to be problematic?” Bowen wrote.
Inside HHS, Bright quickly passed Bowen’s on-the-ground observations to a group that included Wolf, the director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection. “
Can you please reach out to Mike Bowen below? He is a great partner and a really good source for helpful information,” Bright wrote on Jan. 21.
“Thanks Rick,” she replied. “We are tracking and have begun to coordinate with fda, niosh, and manufacturers today. More to follow tomorrow. Thinking about masks, gowns (inc those in shortage), gloves, and eye protection.”
Within a day, Bowen sent an email to Wolf laying out what Prestige could do. The company’s four mothballed manufacturing lines could be restarted with large noncancelable orders, he wrote.
“This is NOT something we would ever wish to do and have NO plans to do it on our own,” he wrote. “I’m simply letting you know that in a dire situation, it could be done.”
Over the next three days, Bowen kept HHS officials informed as orders for a million masks came in from intermediaries for buyers in China and Hong Kong. On Jan. 26, he sent the email warning that the U.S. mask supply was at “imminent risk.”
Bright forwarded it that day to Kadlec and others, urging action: “We have been watching and receiving warnings on this for over a week,” he wrote.
The next day, Bright wrote to his deputy asking him to explore whether BARDA could divert money earmarked for vaccines and other biodefense measures to instead buy masks.
From his end, Bowen said his proposal seemed to be going nowhere. “No one at HHS ever did get back to me in a substantive way,” Bowen said.
The senior U.S. official said Bowen’s idea was considered, but funding could not easily be obtained without diverting it from other projects.
Bowen started talking to reporters about the mask shortage in general terms. He was soon invited to appear on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast: “War Room: Pandemic.”
On the Feb. 12 podcast, the two commiserated over the beleaguered state of U.S. manufacturing. “What I’ve been saying since 2007 is, ‘Guys, I’m warning you, here’s what is going to happen, let’s prepare,’ ” Bowen said on the program. “Because if you call me after it starts, I can’t help everybody.”
Bowen said Bannon put him in touch with Navarro, the White House economic adviser.
Navarro was quick to see the problem, Bowen said. After talking with Navarro, Bowen wrote to Bright that he should soon expect a call from the White House, “I’m pretty sure that my mask supply message will be heard by President Trump this week,” Bowen wrote. “Trump insider reading yesterday’s Wired.com article, the ball is screaming toward your court.”
According to Bright’s complaint, he soon began attending White House meetings and helping Navarro write memos describing the supply of masks as a top issue. Emails and memos attached to the complaint show Bright reporting back to Kadlec and others about his work with Navarro.
None of it turned the tide for Bowen.
Nearly a month after his emailed offer, Bowen received his first formal communication about possibly helping to bolster the U.S. supply. The five-page form letter from the Food and Drug Administration — one Bowen said he suspected was sent to many manufacturers — asked how his company could help with what was by then a “national emergency response” to the shortage of protective gear.
Bowen responded on Feb. 16, by firing off a terse email to FDA and HHS officials. He directed the agencies to a U.S. government website listing approved foreign manufacturers of medical masks. “There you’ll find a long list of . . . approved Chinese respirator companies,” he wrote. “Please send your long list of questions to them.”
In March, Bowen submitted a bid to supply masks to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which by then had taken over purchasing.
The government soon spent over $600 million on contracts involving masks. Big companies like Honeywell and 3M were each awarded contracts totaling for over $170 million for protective gear. One distributor of tactical gear — a company with no history of procuring medical equipment — was awarded a $55 million deal to provide masks for as much as $5.50 a piece, eight times what the government was paying months earlier.
On April 7, FEMA awarded Prestige a $9.5 million contract to provide a million N95 masks a month for one year, an order the company could fulfill without activating its dormant manufacturing lines. For the masks, Prestige charged the government 79 cents a piece.
Jon Swaine, Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Rachel Siegel contributed to this report.
Their incompetence is selective. The are highly competent as twisting every aspect of local, state, and federal policy toward enhancing wealth and power of the few. They are incompetent at protecting the lives of the rest of us because it is of no value to them.
This bumble, stumble story of the Trump administration’s failure to act has the elements of a great TV ad, Joe Biden for President.
Re: This is a story of staggering, incomprehensible incompetence.
Incompetent, yes.
Incomprehensible, no.
The XLVent Regime did not see how they could make a killing, er, a mass quantity of fast enough bucks off the deal.
Incompetensible:
Incompetent but comprehensible.
Dolomphious Donny Invincible,
Triumphantly incompetensible,
Dined with No. 2, Pence
On hydroxychloroquince
And now all his spoons are runcible.
Nice!
Incompretentrehensible = pretending to be incompetent but actually reprehensible
“For the masks, Prestige charged the government 79 cents a piece. ” That’s astounding! Is that the regular price that Prestige charges or was this just a special deal for the government alone? If $0.79 were its regular price, then Prestige would be getting offers from everyone.
Appalling story.
Sent from my iPad
>
We would not know of the degrees and varieties of incompetence and self-dealing in this fiasco if it were not for the investigative journalists, in this instance Jon Swaine, Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Rachel Siegel as well as the curatorial work of Diane Ravitch. Thanks to all and especially to the lone wolf whistle blower Rick Bright.
I expect better out of the leadership of this country but have come to the conclusion that my expectations are far, far greater than can be achieved by Trump, Jared, and the rest of this administration. How many more will die because of Trump’s incompetence?
I am no psychotherapist, but I suspect that dump calls people LOSERS, because he’s really projecting and talking about HIMSELF.
Yes, that moron-in-chief is the biggest LOSER we have ever had for potus.
That dump sure is: Making America GRATE, not great.
COVID-19 is OUR Pearl Harbor.
Trump’s father probably called him a “loser” before he sent him off to military school. Wealthy families rarely send their children off to such schools unless there is a problem.
My favorite part was when ‘Trump’ drank some Clorox and students started clicking off on zoom.
………………………………………
Trump Graduation Speech Cold Open – SNL
May 9, 2020
Saturday Night LiveSt. Mary Magdalene by the Expressway High School holds a virtual graduation ceremony with special guest speaker President Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin).
The ALEC scheme is almost complete. Privatize every single aspect of society so that only the few get to reap the benefits through inside contacts and insider contracts. The “American Dream” is a Libertarian lie! When will the American populace wake up, wise up, summon up the pitchforks and overturn these greedy cretins? Nope….most are too busy and distracted trying to buy purchase the happiness that they think money can buy.
Trump will launch a twitter storm (if he hasn’t already done it) about this “fake news” and Fox will repeat the lies. Trump’s foaming at the mouth, bleach-drinking base will organize car caravans and go on a rampage, maskless, in state capitals threatening governors with loaded AR-15s if they don’t return to the way things were immediate because COVID-19 was a hoax, a plot by Obama or China or Pelosi or whoever else Trump wants to attack.
This article was posted in Patriotic Times. I wonder if this country will ever get this virus under control? People like the one who wrote this article are spreading the disease out of selfishness and disregard for the common good. Illnesses and deaths are not important when jobs are concerned.
……………………………….
MAY 7TH, 2020
WALSH: If You Want To Stay Home, Stay Home. Let The Rest Of Us Get Back To Our Lives.
By Matt WalshDailyWire.com
There is no good reason for the lockdowns to continue. There wasn’t a good reason for them to begin in the first place, but almost everything we have learned in the last two months has made the truth inescapably clear. Over 33 million people have been put out of work. Many businesses have been driven to the brink, or over the edge, of bankruptcy. Our economy teeters near collapse. And all of this, not to prevent deaths or stop the virus, but to merely delay the inevitable moment when we have to figure out how to live in spite of it.
For most of us, the risk of returning to our jobs and our lives is very low. The virus primarily victimizes the old and the infirm, which is why it has had a hugely disproportionate impact on nursing homes. As I wrote yesterday, in many states and countries, nursing homes account for more than half of all COVID-19 fatalities. When you add the elderly who are not in nursing homes, and people with pre-existing conditions, it becomes evident that young and healthy people are very unlikely to die from the disease or be hospitalized because of it. This doesn’t mean we should cavalierly throw aside all precautions and safety measures, but it does mean that there is no good reason, and was never any good reason, for most of us to stay locked in our homes. The threat level for us is quite low, and we should be allowed to take that risk if we wish….
https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-if-you-want-to-stay-home-stay-home-let-the-rest-of-us-get-back-to-our-lives/
“The threat level for us is quite low, and we should be allowed to take that risk if we wish…”
People that think like this guy/gal are ignorant.
They are no different than Typhoid Mary, a woman who spread the disease but wouldn’t die from it so she had no risk of being killed by that disease. She gave the authorities the slip more than once, changed her name, and was responsible for murdering a lot of people.
Like Trump, all these types can do is think about themselves. While the risk might be low for younger people, they can become carriers of the virus and “murder” others they infect directly or indirectly.
This virus is brutal because it is so easily spread, and ten times worse than the annual flu.
The stay-in-place order (not a lockdown in any way) was to slow and hopefully stop the spread of the virus. Because so many have protested and ignored the stay-in-place, those idiots are helping spread the disease.
It is apparent to me, that people that think like that will not feel anything for anyone that might have died because of their reckless behavior.
I am fortunate to be retired and free to stay-in-place and nowhere near these idiots. I carry pepper spray when I’m out shopping for essentials. I think the risk is low that I’ll run into someone like a Trump loyalist, but if I do and they become a threat to infect me, I’m going to spray their face and hope they swallow some of the pepper gel.
Corruption driven by greed topped off with incompetence has killed thousands.
This is proving how rotten the Trump administration is. Remember, “ONLY HE can fix everything.” People dying from COVID-19 is a small price to pay for ‘getting the economy running again’ so that Trump can once again brag about how fantastic he is for America.
………………………
Here are the CDC guidelines the White House doesn’t want you to see
May 7, 2020
The White House buried a comprehensive report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising state and local officials on how to safely reopen public spaces while the United States remains in the clutches of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the 17-page document contained advice from the nation’s leading disease experts on when and how to reopen schools and day camps, workplaces, restaurants and bars, mass transit systems, religious facilities, and childcare centers.
Titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” the report, which includes suggestions for religious leaders, business owners, and academic professionals, was due to be published last Friday. The AP published that report and another CDC document with flowcharts for each sector to follow.
But an unnamed CDC official told the AP reporters Jason Dearen and Mike Stobbe that scientists were told it “would never see the light of day.”…
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-shelves-cdc-report-safely-reopening-country-2020-5