Texas medical masks manufacturer is caught in coronavirus’s supply chain panic

Critical industries need to be domestic because otherwise the country is left vulnerable in a crisis.

I've been to mainland China, Taiwan, HK, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in the last four weeks. China has close to 100% usage of masks in public, mostly the surgical type. The virus is spreading like wildfire there. Every other country I've visited has markedly less mask usage, in particular Vietnam where at least in the south, it's relatively rare to see people wearing them.

Yet in all the other countries it's hardly spreading (obviously I'm excluding the cruise ship off the coast of Japan here, which appears to be a special case).

Their elbow is about 5 inches away from their mouth, which doesn’t suppress the saliva and air molecules coming from their lungs anyways. It might catch some of the spittle, but I’m sure most of it becomes aerosolized anyways.

People, in general, are disgusting.

Let's just say that N95 masks protect you at 95% effectiveness from airborne contamination, and 50% from touch contamination because it stops you from touching your own face, but doesn't stop you from rubbing your eyes, or penetrating your skin in other locations, or for your food preparers from sneezing on your steak. Surgical masks are, for the sake of simplicity, 80% effective at protecting you from airborne contamination.

Let's also say gloves do 0% to protect you from airborne infection, and varying degrees of protection from physical touch depending on the material. Let's say cotton is 40% touch protection because it provides a physical separation of half a millimeter, but it's porous. It keeps your oily skin from picking up residue from contaminated surfaces as easily as bare skin. Flexible oil-based gloves have a 80% protection, but are more easily penetrated by rough surfaces lowering their total protection value (still fake numbers!). They also cause sweat problems for some people and affect the health of the skin itself if worn daily for many hours at a time.

Gloves don't protect you from contaminated item ingestion. They slightly protect you from transmission through touching your face because they inherently pickup a little less than your oily skin. More likely is that you'd simply avoid touching your face more easily because the gloves would be a mental prompt to remind you that your hands are potentially infected.

Biohazard suits are obviously the most effective form of protection.

So on this spectrum of protection, you have several different vectors you're defending against, and several methods of protection. In bare terms of protection, clearly the highest form of protection is the biohazard suit. Why not go for that? Well the cost is too high both in terms of money and in social outcomes. They're also relatively delicate compared to simple clothing and would have to be replaced far more often. Filters would need to be replaced often as well.

Hopefully my unrealistic numbers above help show that there is no "right" answer, all answers have trade offs, and all answers are more appropriate situationally than others. That's the ultimate point.

Someone who travels via subway everyday might well benefit more from an N95 mask than gloves. The cost might even be provably effective. Cotton gloves might be very beneficial for that individual as well, but clearly wearing oil-based gloves would be more effective for their commute.

Someone who drives by themselves in their car, and works in an office building where no more than 5 to 10 people touch the door everyday, they might be fine without either a mask or gloves, unless they are going shopping. Washing hands and asking sick coworkers to cover their mouth when they cough seems completely satisfactory.

I personally don't use either gloves or masks, but I am prepared with cotton gloves if my region shows signs of infection, and will use them when shopping or touching potentially infected surfaces.

I prefer cotton gloves because they're easy and cheap to make, and they're reusable, and biodegradable. I don't see oil based gloves as being a sustainable solution for an entire nation. That's my own personal preference though and I don't like to push that mindset on others. There are more egregious forms of waste than tiny gloves.

N95 masks (and other types of HEPA filters) actually perform better on smaller particles.

A very common misconception is that HEPA filters only filter particles larger than 0.3 microns. In fact there's multiple different filtration mechanisms at play, with interception and impaction working better for larger particles, and diffusion being more effective for smaller particles. HEPA filters are rated for their effectiveness at 0.3 microns because that size is the size where the combination of mechanisms operate worst: smaller and larger particles are filtered even more effectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA#Mechanism