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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

I don't have much faith of any country doing a good job at this.

Canada built up federal and provincial stockpiles of N95s after SARS1 (2003), and destroyed those N95s without replenishing them once they expired...

(and if it's not obvious, didn't rotate stock to avoid expiration entirely)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/heath-minister-e...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada...

I live close enough to a nuclear plant to have government-provided iodine tablets on-hand, but nobody's given me free N95s to... you know, not breathe in radioactive dust.

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Hold the phone, how do N95 masks even expire if stored properly? What causes their fibers to decay?

>destroyed those N95s without replenishing them once they expired

Whenever I'll do something stupid, I'll remind myself of this action of the Canadian government to comfort myself.

Did they at least learn the lesson after COVID to keep their stocks up for the next once in a lifetime pandemic?

I think the French did the same or close.

Fist scandal was having piles and piles of vaccines and masks for the H5N1 flue.

Second waves was discovering that said piles ( of masks ) were gone.

Part of the French social contract is based on having a strong state, that is somewhat competent at providing basic shit. ( in exchange for all the ailes of a strong state )

That was not a glorious moment

It was the same all over Europe (possibly elsewhere as well) IIRC. At least also in Germany.

It made me feel better if you guys screw it up too.

( it’s a joke, I actually wish for our respectives government to get their shit together )

In hindsight things are obvious but most countries did the same mistake and so would you if you were in charge.

This is a defeatist attitude that will not help improve our society.

Sure, there are some reasons for the mistakes (my assumption is that since Europe survive almost unscathed SARS, the importance of having usable stockpiles wasn't as clear as it is now), but this doesn't mean that it was physically impossible to avoid these mistakes.

I’m also praising a predecessor of that same health ministry.

And, is it defeatism or a factual observation of our leaders action?

Demanding more clarity and accountability is good enough for the stakeholders of private society.

Why not our democratic leader? Specially the accountability bit.

More than poor handling or stocks, I have difficulty to digest the lies.

Example : In France, once it became evident that the stocks were gone, the official language element became « mask are useless » ( for real )

Then a few weeks later « mask are too complex for the general public to handle, we need to keep them for health professionals »

And finally, « please wear a masks »

The best practices and science did not change in those mere 3 months. They were just telling us bullshit. I don’t like that.

A sane and open post mortem of the situation would be helpful.

And that’s not défaitismes, it’s a hope that we can do better if we have a hard look at ourselves and our leaders actions.

If I were in charge of the Center for Disease Control, I would use some of its $8 bn budget to prepare adequate countermeasures for a respiratory pandemic.

I would not be in charge because I’m a moron.

The event I was referring to was that our health minister at the time of the H1N1 pandemic got ridiculed because she ordered masks and vaccines en masse early on in the outbreak.

In insight, she did really well. So, not every body is fucking it up every time. At least that woman did not.

The fibers in an N95 are electrostatically charged, which is how they are able to capture small particles.

I don't know for sure, but it's possible this charge may decay over time perhaps?

(Or, more likely, the manufacturer may have only tested/verified up to a certain time after manufacture, and that's what they are certified for)

Seemingly they can be recharged, one hour between two plates at 1000 V appears to be the soft spot:

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0023940

just imagine the cost of either re-processing the existing masks or having 1000 V "re-chargers" at home ...

A bit like the old quartz-fiber radiation dosimeters, I suppose - those actually were a consumer product [1], along with the high-voltage DC charger required to "zero" them for reuse, back some 60 or so years ago and a fair bit before safety was invented.

[1] https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/civil-...

>a fair bit before safety was invented.

i still remember the oscillating fan at my grandparents' house from the 50s. It was a 12" fan made out of solid metal. Not one piece of plastic to be found any where on this thing. The blades looked like something from the back of a Naval ship. The interesting thing to me was the grate covering the fan. To this day, I'm really not sure of the purpose. I could easily stick my hand through the grate today as an adult. Yes, this fan still works today as well as it did when I was a kid and the fan was already 30 years old. Something like this: https://i.etsystatic.com/15784874/r/il/432676/2183412824/il_...

Clearly, safety was not invented at that time.

Oh, I know the type very well! As a kid I often put ours on a chair by my bed. Even then I didn't really feel great about that, but when you don't have AC, it doesn't take much trying to sleep through a Mississippi summer night before you decide it's worth the risk for enough breeze not to feel like you're drowning. Ours was especially delightful too in having the speed control on the front of the base, so you couldn't even turn it off without having to think about what life might be like with everyone calling you "Stumpy".

As far as I could ever tell, the grate's only there to keep it from sucking up curtains, and to keep you from getting caught up between the fan blades and the pedestal; with the torque out of those old motors, it'd certainly take off a finger and probably break an arm. For everything else you're on your own, which is why I don't really mind the scar I still have on my right middle knuckle from the only time I ever tried to turn it up to "high" without turning a light on first - if I'd missed the lever by a quarter inch more, that old cast-iron widowmaker would've given me a whole lot worse.

> The interesting thing to me was the grate covering the fan. To this day, I'm really not sure of the purpose. I could easily stick my hand through the grate today as an adult.

The cage probably maybe protects the blades from hitting the ground if tipped over? No need to protect them from fleshy objects though, those will move one way or another.

Perhaps it doesn't matter whether N95 still function well. Once pass the expire date printed on the package, warehouse has to remove them from inventory.

>"Did they at least learn the lesson"

The only thing politicians learn is how to win elections. The rest is just a change for trade.

If only they just threw away masks...

The Trudeau administration funneled 44 million dollars [0] and months [1] of taxpayer funded research work to CCP controlled CanSino in order to get cheaper doses than the American backed vaccine candidates [3]. It, unsurprisingly, failed spectacularly.

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/7302194/canada-coronavirus-vaccin...

[1] https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/12/a-waste-of-a-lot-of-time-res...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies...

Some manufactured versions can last over a decade if stored properly in low humidity to prevent water from discharging the fiber charge.

If we had a smart government, we would start stockpiling now for the next pandemic and have a FIFO replacement system. The cost of such a ‘respirator battery’ would be about 1-2 Abrahams tanks

Don't even need to be aggressive about FIFO. Buy with 5y shelf life, sell off and rotate when there's 1y left.

The average construction site/whatever will happily buy N95s that will expire in 6 months for a 20% discount because when they go through a pile every week.

Heck, I buy nearly expired allergy pills for a discount because I know that the API is super stable in solid form at standard conditions.

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