As a forty-year veteran of the North American medical device industry, watching reporters complain to President Trump at his Saturday news briefing that a random doctor in Louisville, Kentucky couldn’t obtain a mask and other such granular complaints was infuriating and nauseating.  The root questions are not absurd:  When will all Americans be able to be tested?  When will everyone who needs a mask have one?

What is absurd is that reporters ask these questions presumably expecting that any one person can give a precise and immediate answer with certainty. The tone of that reporter as well as prior exchanges from the Corona Virus Task Force press audience seemed to suggest that if the federal government would just put more pressure on those evil, greedy, indolent, incompetent companies to work harder, then production and supply problems could be solved lickety split.  Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer recently issued a vapid press release demanding “strong and immediate action” but with no specifics; only the implication that our president and his outstanding team are not already working around the clock to good effect.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the medical device market in the United States in 2020 is estimated to generate sales revenue exceeding $190 billion.  No one person knows, or can know exactly where all the particular category products are inside the supply chain which is more complex than, say the grocery supply chain, at any given moment.  Curious reporters might do well to familiarize themselves with the business basics of subjects about which they wish to inquire with specificity.

 A good place to start would be with AdvaMed, a trade organization representing over 400 companies whose members include all those that manufacture masks, gloves, test kits, ventilators, gowns and other items needed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.  Each of those companies manage components and raw materials, production equipment, manufacturing know-how, and skilled employees who work according to specifications in order to produce, assemble, check, sterilize, package and ship all these goods daily as fast as they possibly can to fill open orders. 

In terms of tracking the flow of medical devices, expediting and understanding the supply chain, GHX (Global Healthcare Exchange) is a healthcare business and data automation company, “…using cloud-based supply chain technology exchange platform, solutions, analytics and services to bring together more than 4,100 healthcare providers [physicians and hospitals] and 600 manufacturers and distributors in North America who use this comprehensive data to automate their business processes and make more informed, timely and fact-based decisions.”  On top of this well-oiled process for production and tracking, each company has many – and usually scores of – employees devoted to data management, product management and inventory control whose job it is to push maximum output out the door while minimizing life threatening errors.

Every company wishes to produce as much as is humanly possible, especially now, in order to do their part in resolving this unprecedented crisis.  Yet New York's Mayor Bill De Blasio whines that the president should send in the Army, presumably so that Gomer Pyle could immediately be put to work building ventilators, the integrated circuit boards for which mostly come from China, by the way.  Perhaps Beetle Bailey could drive a supply truck covered in an olive-green tarpaulin to healthcare facilities experiencing shortages.  This author has the utmost respect for our brave and dedicated military members.  It’s simply a matter of skill sets being applicable to solving various types of problems.  From long experience, there is no shortage of trucking in the medical device supply chain and the professionals on both end of those trucks already know exactly what to do in order to get products to their destination fast.

What universe do these clueless reporters and politicians inhabit in order to believe that our military whom they castigate as to their compassion and operational caution in battle, could immediately step in and solve these very complicated and currently well-handled logistics?

Politicians are fools and stooges for the most part and so are the lackeys who pretend to be reporters but are actually just partisan hacks who want a “gotcha” headline or soundbite for their audiences whom they have conditioned over the last four years to despise and be suspicious of President Trump.  Some people are offended that the president doesn’t suffer fools gladly in his recent frank put downs of sensation seeking “reporting.”  Some Americans are delighted and wish he would go even further and harder.    

Image credit: Pixabay public domain