As I noted earlier, @TPM has been tracking this shipment and this story since early April. Without going into too much detail about the reporting, the process confirmed what many of us have suspected: the reason there’s been so little ... . https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-long-strange-trip-of-one-shipment-of-millions-of-kn95-masks

2/ detailed reporting on the federal governments seizures of PPE medical supplies is that no one invovled wants to talk about it. The government doesn’t for obvious reasons. But the purchasers, distributors and importers don’t either because the only upshot is going ...

3/ to be making it harder to get more masks. So there is what amounts to a very understandable conspiracy of silence among the victims. Why would you piss off the feds? Why would you spotlight a particular hospital or vendor and make it even harder next time?

4/ When I say ‘victims’ it is important to note, as @JoshKovensky’s piece makes clear, it’s not a black and white story. The dominant theme is less bad acting than confusion and chaos. But as we’ve shown here the administration is using the DPA to seize goods, either ...

5/ because they want them sent to other people or because they suspect or claim to suspect profiteering. This is just one of those stories and in this case the goods actually got through after the feds backed off, but only after a series of plot twists that you’d ...

6/ more expect in an Elmore Leonard novel than anything the federal government to be up to during an historic pandemic when tens of thousands of Americans are dying.