White House canceled plans to mail face masks to every American home because Trump hates Amazon's Jeff Bezos and was feuding with USPS
The Trump White House canceled a plan to send face masks to every household in America because of Donald Trump's personal feud with the United States Postal Service, and his personal animus toward Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
From the Washington Post:
As the virus began to rage across the United States, some of the nation's health officials had a novel idea. Face coverings were emerging as one of the simplest tools available to control the contagion's spread. So Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, called Jerry Cook, an executive at the cotton clothing giant Hanes, on March 13 to discuss producing enough masks to send to every American household, according to two senior administration officials.
Cook pulled together a number of underwear makers, including Fruit of the Loom, SanMar, Beverly Knits and Delta Apparel, to figure out how to redirect their manufacturing operations to manufacture 650 million three-ply cotton masks — enough to send a packet of five to each household. The masks would bear an HHS logo, contain a microbiocide that would kill the virus, and say: "Do your part, help stop the spread."
Political infighting happened, one thing led to another, and, the Post continues:
Then there was the issue of logistics. For months leading up to the pandemic, Trump had been attacking the U.S. Postal Service and airing grievances over its business relationship with Amazon. Some aides surmised that, for Trump, a private-public partnership involving the Postal Service as the distributor would be a nonstarter.
The mail-a-mask plan was killed. The Office of Management and Budget tried to cancel the contracts with the underwear makers, but the masks still were produced and distributed to health clinics, religious groups and states that requested them. Hanes did not respond to a request for comment.
Read the full story at The Washington Post: The inside story of how Trump's denial,mismanagement and magical thinkingled to the pandemic's dark winter
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Xeni Jardin, Khareem Sudlow
