This emergency has shown the sincere lack of investment by the USA to such emergencies. FEMA should have invested in "Pandemic Response." The agency should always have a "non-expired" inventory to dispatch into the USA. FEMA should have been able to crack open the warehouses and distribute ventilators, gloves, masks and eye protection.

This lack of preparedness is alarming, to say the least. 

There are companies profiting from this national emergency. There is nothing wrong with that so long as it is not price gouging.

Realize, even today without previous preparation that there was a long lead-in that could have brought USA companies into production and/or higher production to serve this emergency. There is no excuse for what is happening today.

March 20, 2020
By Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima

U.S. intelligence agencies (click here) were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.

The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.

Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.