Pirate's Cove

Seriously, how long did they think the Chinese coronavirus pandemic would last? There was always going to be a point where masking would stop, with just a few mask cultists masking up

America’s mask manufacturers take it on the chin

A U.S. judge’s ruling this week that the Biden administration’s mask mandate for public transportation was unlawful dealt another blow to an industry that built dozens of small U.S. mask factories during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just a year ago, 26 of these upstart producers signed a letter to the administration, urging a crackdown on an influx of low-priced Chinese masks that was undermining their new operations, all of which were opened in response to a health crisis that highlighted U.S. dependence on foreign producers of all types of medical safety gear.

Today, just nine of the letter’s signers still produce masks.

“The government never really supported mask manufacturing in the U.S.,” said Lloyd Armbrust, chief executive of Armbrust American, a mask maker in Pflugerville, Texas. The lifting of the mandate will only hasten the decline of the new industry, he added.

Armbrust, who is also president of the American Mask Manufacturer’s Association, a group created to fight for the domestic startups, is one of the survivors. But his mask business is a shadow of what it was even a few months ago.

They needed to plan for the end of forced masking, right? It’s great that they were able to take advantage of what was going on to make a few bucks, but, they needed to plan for the end of operations.

During the record surge of cases from the fast-spreading Omicron variant that started late last year and peaked in January, Armbrust did up to half a million dollars in sales a day, he said. “Now, we’re like 5% of that.”

It was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Even the whole N95 thing was short lived after Brandon pimped them.

Armbrust said his business can make money producing at a lower level, in part because it has shifted toward also producing air filters for homes. Unlike face masks, which have become a divisive U.S. political issue, home filters are not controversial.

That’s smart. The mask companies need to adapt. How many will, and how many will demand a bailout from the Brandon admin?

Domestic producers say one risk going forward is that they are unlikely to ramp up production again, should a new virus variant emerge or some other crisis that prompts governments and businesses to again rush to buy masks.

“You better believe I won’t scale up like that again,” said Armbrust. “Why would I?”

OK? Most people still have plenty of masks around. I have a bunch of them sitting around. Some people burned theirs. I think we’ll be OK, especially since I doubt most will put up with any sort of new mask mandate, since the previous ones made zero difference. People were still mostly forced to mask up when the Delta and Omicron variants hit and spiked.

They tried to make a buck off people getting sick and dying….eh, that’s only partially fair…and now things have collapsed. No one complained that when all the disco companies were stuck with their products at the end of the disco era.