It’s just four years to flatten the economy, the social order, and human souls.
It’s about saving lives from a deadly virus that already killed everyone you know.
The Biden administration has inked a nearly $137 million contract with a pharmaceutical company to build a factory in Wisconsin to produce material used in COVID-19 test strips — but the finished product is not scheduled to roll off assembly lines before late 2024.
The Defense Department announced the $136.7 million deal Wednesday with Millipore Sigma, a unit of Germany’s Merck KGaA, to construct the facility at its Sheboygan site over the next three years in order to boost production of nitrocellulose membranes, the paper that displays the test results.
The deal, worked out in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services, will allow 83.3 million more tests to be produced each month.
Millipore Sigma spokeswoman Rachel Bloom-Baglin told The Post Thursday the years-long timeline was due to the “complex process” of producing the membranes, which she described as “highly-engineered pieces of paper.”
Millipore Sigma noted in a statement that the membranes are used in rapid tests for ailments other than COVID-19, including HIV, influenza and malaria, “as well as in women’s health, biomarker detection, drug testing, food safety and animal health.”
“We’re grateful to the Biden administration for recognizing this need,” Bloom-Baglin said.
The announcement comes as the US attempts to weather a testing crunch amid a surge of COVID-19 cases fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant — and suggests the administration sees an ongoing need for coronavirus testing over the next few years, with the Defense Department release noting that the Wisconsin facility will support “future needs.”
Funds for the contract were allocated through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan enacted earlier this year.
If you think this is going to end, you’re retarded AND in denial.
It can’t be one or the other at this point. It has to be both. You have to be a retard in denial.