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Comment by throwwqy8739 | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting how much commentary there has been in the last week about why masks supposedly don’t work (for example, https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/).

It’s a sort of “sensible contrarianism”, designed to appeal to the vanity of readers who view themselves as being above the fray.

Another trope is making fun of people who are preparing for possible quarantines and supply chain disruptions, or comparing the absolute numbers of people who die from seasonal flu to Covid-19, and pronouncing it overblown (more common on social media).

Now to find a face mask...

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I don't know about the situation worldwide, but it is at least reported that in the USA currently there is a severe shortage of masks and that shortage is adversely affecting health professionals. Discouraging the casual mask purchaser (although not with false information) seems to be of at least temporary value here.

Would it not be reasonable to actually tell the truth then about why people shouldn't buy masks rather than putting out statements that contradict the evidence for the "greater good"?

An agency such as the CDC lying to public seems incredibly counterproductive in the long run.

The US FED just issued $250B bonds 2 days ago. Sure they would be able to buy up all available masks instead of shaming people who want to survive and buying up the fairly repriced stock market.

Surely doctors get their masks from medical suppliers and not off Amazon or from corner stores?

Speaking for my office and the offices of friends:

Between lay people buying up existing stock, and disruptions to production in China, we are seeing shortages. Some of our suppliers are restricting us to historical orders (if you usually ordered 5 boxes/mo, that's what you're getting), others are restricting us to flat-out number caps (3 boxes/mo, period).

They are not taking new accounts, even from medical practices.

My office practice is such that we have very low historical usage, and in this climate can't increase orders to keep up with the current level of caution patients prefer. I've ended up ordering P100s instead of surgical masks or N95s because they're the only thing I could get a hold of (and more effective than N95s), just to have something in the closet in case of a surge in need. I had to get it from an industrial supplier, and my understanding is that my modest order cleaned them out.

It ain't great.

The same companies make both masks, and we have a run on the bank right now.

Most likely 3M and crew are tooling up their production and diverting product to medical customers, but it’s still going to be tight for a while.

According to early February's reports, 3M's mask making factory - in China - was nationalized by the Chinese Government. Ships en route to the US with mask deliveries were supposedly ordered to turn around and bring the masks back to China.

Source? I'm listening to NPR doing an interview with 3M's mask-making division as I read this and there's zero mention of the supposed nationalization you report. I strongly suspect you have fallen prey to trolling.

Whitehouse trade advisor Peter Navarro made the claim in an interview on February 24th:

https://youtu.be/4nM0gDDKYDQ?t=205

> "Let's take face masks for example. N95 face masks. Typical problem, China. China basically makes a bunch of them. Well the first thing they did was put on export restrictions so that we couldn't get any of them. Next thing they did was nationalize effectively 3M, our company, in China, to prevent them from sending us any stuff."

On February 23rd Navarro discussed it as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImxuY_yLCBQ

> "China put export restrictions on those masks and then nationalized an American factory that produces them there."

Thanks for tracking that down. In any other administration I would have considered a White House spokesperson to be as good as a primary source but this administration's messaging does not hold to the same traditions of truth as previous administrations (of either party).

Given the situation in China, that seems to be a prudent action.

source?

Whitehouse trade advisor Peter Navarro made the claim in an interview on February 24th:

https://youtu.be/4nM0gDDKYDQ?t=205

On February 23rd Navarro discussed it as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImxuY_yLCBQ

> "China put export restrictions on those masks and then nationalized an American factory that produces them there."

Wow. Thanks

Wonder if masks do help a bit, but spread is inevitable and governments don't want public to increase their panic seeing everyone wearing them everywhere.

There is little clear evidence that they help the general population, so the effect is not important compared to washing your hands properly.

There are some research showing that it helps. Other than the one linked in this post, here's a couple others:

> Among nurses in Ontario tertiary care hospitals, use of a surgical mask compared with an N95 respirator resulted in noninferior rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19797474

> during a severe pandemic when use of face masks might be greater, pandemic transmission in households could be reduced.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662657/

Also, purely anecdotally, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, virtually everyone are wearing masks when going out in public. Compared to other regions, the spread is much more limited despite the close proximity to China - Taiwan had blocked entry from China early on, but not Hong Kong.

Lastly, even if it "only prevent the sick from spreading it", wouldn't it help with limiting the chance of the asymptomatic cases from from further spreading the disease?

Now, if the general population purchasing masks is truly impacting the medical staff's supplies, then it's a legitimate reason to ask people to stop buying them. But telling them it is useless seems quite misleading.

>It’s a sort of “sensible contrarianism”, designed to appeal to the vanity of readers who view themselves as being above the fray.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/atheists.png

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