Correct, they were physically depleted to far below minimum levels after H1N1 (and other crises), but SARS was their last warning before COVID-19. General political leadership across parties and jurisdictions [1] routinely treat it as a deadweight loss by allowing severe atrophy, short-changing the requested budgets; most recently in 2011 a -$121M shortfall [2].
Read into that what you will, but my hot take on it is if there is another pandemic, or an NBC attack, unless you are part of the 0.1% of government, you're on your own preparedness supplies.
I don't see the SNS placing the long-term supplies under inert gases and in extremely dry storage conditions (though much of it is secret, so I'm hoping they're doing this and just not telling anyone), the primary cause of various rubber components expiring. They are definitely not integrated into vendor supply chains, nor practicing shipping on a regular basis to rotate stock and evaluate large-scale field trials of preserved PPE to establish long-term operational practices that no one in the world has performed, injecting into re-supply orders and tracking the results with the healthcare institutions.
Once PPE preservation is worked out reasonably well, then the costs of maintaining the stockpile switch to marginal replacement costs. Then they can switch to funding research into reusable PPE, and ultra-long storage (on the order of 100 years). The national security angle is to weaponize the increasingly-long storage durations themselves, while at the same time benefiting the environment (less disposables): the ever-increasing lifespan covering an ever-increasing percentage of the population for an ever-increasing incident timespan are wielded as a deterrence factor; if we quickly react and return to semi-normal relatively quickly based upon such a robust supply chain, the effectiveness of such attacks are neutralized to that extent.
Read into that what you will, but my hot take on it is if there is another pandemic, or an NBC attack, unless you are part of the 0.1% of government, you're on your own preparedness supplies.
I don't see the SNS placing the long-term supplies under inert gases and in extremely dry storage conditions (though much of it is secret, so I'm hoping they're doing this and just not telling anyone), the primary cause of various rubber components expiring. They are definitely not integrated into vendor supply chains, nor practicing shipping on a regular basis to rotate stock and evaluate large-scale field trials of preserved PPE to establish long-term operational practices that no one in the world has performed, injecting into re-supply orders and tracking the results with the healthcare institutions.
Once PPE preservation is worked out reasonably well, then the costs of maintaining the stockpile switch to marginal replacement costs. Then they can switch to funding research into reusable PPE, and ultra-long storage (on the order of 100 years). The national security angle is to weaponize the increasingly-long storage durations themselves, while at the same time benefiting the environment (less disposables): the ever-increasing lifespan covering an ever-increasing percentage of the population for an ever-increasing incident timespan are wielded as a deterrence factor; if we quickly react and return to semi-normal relatively quickly based upon such a robust supply chain, the effectiveness of such attacks are neutralized to that extent.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/30/federal-pande...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/strategic-national-stockpile...