Last month, Susan Houghtelling, a hospital supply-chain manager in upstate New York, was facing a shortfall of medical supplies when her inbox suddenly flooded with offers.
Blank Industries is a real company, but it’s an ice-melt manufacturer in Hudson, Massachusetts. In an interview, Andrew Blank, the founder, said he had upended his business to sell masks after hearing from a former Chinese supplier he had once hired to make a new kind of toothbrush. After the coronavirus hit, the supplier turned his dental-products plant into a mask factory. Blank told his 12 employees to stop selling rock salt and start selling masks.
Last month, federal officials agreed to buy roughly 600 million N95 masks over the next 18 months. But many states and hospitals are desperate for supplies right now, and the government has already nearly exhausted the supply of protective gear in the national stockpile. On Thursday, the White House said it had invoked the Defense Production Act, a 1950s law, to ensure the manufacturing giant 3M sends a certain share of its masks to the United States.
The hospital is prepared to pay more for masks, but it does not want to buy counterfeit gear. “You’re in this uncharted territory where you’re struggling to just at least validate,” Bonetti said. “The last thing we want to do is put product on a clinician that is not going to protect them.”Not every new entrant to the market is a good Samaritan. Groups on Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram are teeming with posts hawking thousands of masks at inflated prices.
“They’re just more serious,” he said. “So if I have the goods, I want a serious buyer for them. And besides, it’s a morally good reason.” That demand has fueled the spike in prices. While some factory owners are probably making handsome margins, much of the price increase is likely spread across the supply chain, from the firms that ship and inspect the masks to those that make the masks’ fabric and the machines that assemble them.
“The fast-forward button was pressed at that moment, and it really hasn’t stopped,” Schonfeld, 40, said. “I don’t think I slept for four nights straight.”