There are almost 19,000 manufacturers in Pennsylvania.
There are more than 570,400 employees who work to package potato chips and create Slinky toys and assemble Zippo lighters. Pennsylvanians work with powdered metals and electronics, chemicals and glass and steel.
While Pennsylvania is being shuttered against the coronavirus, with Gov. Tom Wolf closing “non-life-sustaining” businesses, it could be helping sustain them instead.
President Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act, a law that has been on the books since 1950 when an America just a few years out of World War II headed into the Korean War with new needs. He has done it in the interest of obtaining those things that will be critical going into an expected surge of covid-19 hospitalizations.
The big ones have been the most publicized. The ventilator machines to help the most fragile patients breathe. The masks and gloves and gowns that protect the medical personnel and first responders who will be face to face with people suffering from the contagious respiratory condition.
They will not be the only needs.
China built a hospital in 10 days and then had to outfit it to treat patients. In Seattle, New York City and Los Angeles, the cities are finding additional locations to provide the beds for an explosion of diagnoses. Italy is dealing with the needs of the dead as it surpasses China in the number of victims of the disease.
So let’s find a way to let the Pennsylvania workforce be the keystone to battling coronavirus.
During World War II, Heinz didn’t prioritize ketchup. The company started making gliders, according to the Heinz History Center. Pittsburgh manufacturers didn’t shut down when people left to go to war; they supported the war effort by converting from making what was wanted to what was needed.
Adapting to provide what is needed in changing times is what Southwestern Pennsylvania does. Pittsburgh went from being a steel town with some hospitals to a hospital town that makes some steel.
So maybe Trump and Wolf can give the area the chance to step up and help battle the virus and defend the economy at the same time.
This wouldn’t be the first war Pennsylvania helped win.
