The detail I keep coming back to in this old COVID report is the wait: medical supplies could take months to…

This is from March 2020, not a new outbreak. The World Health Organization estimated that the response needed 89 million medical masks and 76 million examination gloves each month. It called for production to increase by 40%. At the same time, prices were shooting up, supplies were being hoarded and export restrictions were getting in the way.

It's easy to get interested in a better mask. I do too. The quieter jobs — making enough, getting boxes through borders, delivering them to the right hospital — don't make such exciting stories. But a nurse needs the mask to be there when a shift starts. An impressive design somewhere else isn't much help.

I wish we gave more credit to the people who make ordinary things reliably available. The person who gets enough gloves to a hospital on time has done something worth talking about. Even if there isn't a shiny new invention to photograph.