The Trump administration failed to move forward with an Obama-era plan to make millions of protective masks for healthcare workers, according to The Washington Post.

A 2015 contract with medical manufacturer O&M Halyard called for the creation of a “one-of-a-kind, high-speed machine” that could hopefully produce at least 1.5 million N95 masks per day, to resolve the kind of protective equipment shortfall plaguing clinics and hospitals today.

A Halyard employee told The Post the design was delivered on time and in-budget in 2018.

But the machine was never created. An HHS spokesperson told the paper that no funding was available to build it, though The Post reports that the department responsible for the project had a nearly $1.5 billion budget for 2020. So no money for pandemic preparedness, but lots of money for tax cuts for billionaires…remember that.

From WashPo:

The Obama administration and medical firm Halyard Health of Alpharetta, Ga., announced the project to develop a rapid pandemic mask production line in December 2015. Halyard promised in its 2015 statement to design a “one-of-a-kind, high-speed machine” to help federal health planners solve a production problem that had bedeviled them for years.

Officials had long assumed that a public health emergency would one day create a huge demand for the respirator masks known as N95s. But the difficulty of predicting when a pandemic or other crisis would strike meant stockpiled masks could pass their expiration dates while sitting on shelves.

Halyard said its new machine would provide a just-in-time inventory alternative and avoid waste by enabling rapid and plentiful production when a crisis hit.

Amid the current crisis, the design remains available, according to the spokesperson, who said, “Implementing this design along with use of more proven mask manufacturing techniques are being considered by a supply chain task force to reduce N95 shortages.”

Howard Cohen, a professor of occupational safety at the University of New Haven, said “it is sad, because we really did see this coming. We saw the shortfall. And there were a bunch of things that potentially could have been done and weren’t.”

From WashPo:

Asked whether the machine in its design could have accomplished the 1.5 million daily rate, Halyard said in a statement that it submitted a plan “to meet the requested specifications.” The HHS spokesperson said, “The project successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the approach and developed an initial design of a high-speed mask manufacturing line.”

1.5 million masks a day was achievable…and would be very useful right now as medical professionals are being forced to use bandanas to protect themselves, and citizens aren’t even able to get N95 masks, which are the most effective in blocking the coronavirus.