Health care failure

Farhad Manjoo wrote an opinion piece in today’s NY Times.(March 26). He asked how is it that this country can’t  produce a 75 cent mask?  It occurs to me that this crisis is an opportunity for this country to bring back manufacturing.   A start might be critical medical supplies. Even if the government had to subsidize. How much of the military budget should be redirected to be prepared for the kind of war that the Coronavirus represents?  The greatest country in the world can’t make it’s own masks? So how do ordinary people like myself begin to get this idea out there? What advocacy group would embrace this idea? What are the politics of this?