There was an act passed (I don't remeber its name, but it was meant for situations like this) that allows government to force factories to produce needed materials. Yet government refused to use it, they refuse to invoke stay in place in remaining states. They blocked states from doing testing, bidding against states for supplies and cherry on top DOJ secretly asked if they can suspend constitutional rights to allow holding people in cells for unspecified time among other things. WTF, it's like they want this pandemic to be as bad as possible.
We already can see most countries working and flattening the infection curve, yet US is still growing exponentially. We are now #3 and looks like we will be #1 (surpassing China and Italy) before March ends.
My bad, last time I heard an expert talking about it that the act was created exactly for this kind of event and Trump was resisting invoking it to not affect private companies. I'm glad he changed his mind.
Still, I think he should stay at home in other states. LA county seems to assume it is beyond containment and now only tests people if that would affect the treatment.
I think a big thing that isn't being said is that the government is also attempting to manage civil unrest. There is an old saying about there being a gun behind every blade of grass in this country. We have a very different culture and risk situation than a place like China where they literally welded people's doors shut and let them starve to death.
I think they know certain things need to be done, but they have to also manage expectations and make enough of the population/media/state govt be "demanding" these enforced lock downs before it is really feasible.
Lastly, I think most companies are doing the right thing. 3M is cranking out industrial N95 masks as fast as they can since the govt dropped liability protection (since they are not rated for medical use). GM and others have offered to make ventilators. The defense production act only needs to be invoked if factories/suppliers are not doing the right thing. The specifics of the invocation haven't been announced yet, but I suspect one or more companies started misbehaving, and that resulted in invoking the act.
We already can see most countries working and flattening the infection curve, yet US is still growing exponentially. We are now #3 and looks like we will be #1 (surpassing China and Italy) before March ends.