| Hi folks, it's Shelly. In a strange turn of events, surgical and N95 masks are now among the most in-demand technologies in the world. As nurses and doctors in the U.S. and Europe run out of essential gear to serve an influx of patients infected with the new coronavirus, tech giants are springing into action: Apple Inc. has said it will donate "millions" of masks. Facebook Inc. will give 720,000 from the supply it had amassed in case California's wildfires persisted. And Intel Corp. said it would donate more than a million items including masks and other supplies. Startup Flexport Inc. has tapped its logistics operation to buy $1.4 million of face masks and other medical protective equipment for San Francisco's health department. That's on top of new efforts by non-tech companies like Germany's Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and the French workshops of Balenciaga and Saint Laurent. Even Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is now delivering millions of masks across the globe. And he's said he will send shipments of emergency supplies to the U.S. "We will ship long-distance, and we will hurry!" he tweeted over the weekend. The tech companies' efforts come as hospitals find themselves alarmingly low on supplies. In Washington state, desperate hospital workers have been fashioning protective gear out of industrial tape, elastic and other craft supplies as stopgap measures to deal with severe shortages. Meanwhile, New York's mayor said the city could hit a potentially deadly equipment shortage by next week. At a time when governments are facing fierce criticism for their handling of the pandemic—both for not doing enough, and for doing too much—these efforts feel like a saving grace. But there are limits to how effective private industry can be. American tech companies often don't manufacture much domestically, and don't have factories on U.S. soil that they can easily shift into medical gear production. So they're relying on relationships with the Asian factories that make their gadgets and their hefty cash reserves to try to buy up masks on the private market, particularly as demand drops in China and increases in the rest of the world. And while every little bit helps—especially for front-line medical workers who desperately need personal protective gear—as Vox points out, all the donations of the tech giants put together will be only a drop in the bucket compared with hospitals' soaring demand. To make real progress quickly, the U.S. will likely need to put its political tensions with China aside to find a way to substantially increase mask imports from the country. China was already a massive producer of medical supplies, and is now getting its factories back online after its own coronavirus lockdown. Tech leaders can help save lives and set the right example, but broader government action will be necessary to get masks over to the U.S. from China at a meaningful scale fast enough. Even Jack Ma can't solve this crisis alone. —Shelly Banjo with Vlad Savov | 
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