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Comment by nitwit005 | Hacker News Reader

There's a shortage of masks because the production facilities for masks cannot be built and staffed instantly. If you tried to start one up now, the price will likely have collapsed by the time you have it running, leaving you with an unprofitable facility.

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I own equipment, have stock, and have staff that could start making masks this afternoon (I normally make decorative covers for custom car interiors).

It probably isn't as fast as other production lines, but I could probably make 2 masks per second, and if I brought in night workers, that works out to a million masks a week. Not much, but profitable if I could sell them at inflated prices, but not at regular prices.

I don't though, because I don't have the contacts to be able to sell them. And anyway, I'm scared of liability if my masks don't work as expected.

That equipment will sit idle if coronavirus spreads to my bit of the world.

It's absolutely crucial that masks actually filter out very fine particulates. N95 masks are rated to filter out >=95% of 0.3 micron particles. You probably have the stock to make something close enough to a typical surgical mask, but that's not going to protect the wearer from Coronavirus, at best it would prevent a contagious patient from spreading it. You also need to form the mask such that the edges will seal against the face. I doubt you have suitable filter media on hand, and tight woven fabric will not cut it here. It's significantly harder to trap virus laden particles in the air after they've dried out, so coarse filter media is only going to be effective if it's right in front of the source where the breath is still hot and humid.

In fact, at least one study has found plain old surgical masks noninferior to N95 masks for preventing infection by flu (others have found them a little worse, and that's probably the smart way to bet). Common sense suggests that anything that prevents you from touching your mouth would help at least a little.

There is a difference between the best tool for the job and better than nothing. Our civilization has a dangerous habit of mandating the best tool for the job, and then unnecessarily suffering with nothing in an emergency.

Moreover, even if the party line that coarse unsealed masks are completely worthless at protecting the wearer from infection were true, it would still make a big difference in the rate of spread of the virus for everyone to start wearing masks! Who cares what the private benefit is when there is definitely a public benefit? And yes, we could make plenty of masks for everyone if we weren't crippled by regulation, hatred of supply and demand, and the attitude that inaction is better than imperfection.

But the droplets the virus uses to spread are bigger than 5-10 micrometers. You don’t need a N95 mask to stop that.

Can you give me a reference for the "bigger than 5-10 micrometers" size?

Any scientific article, published or unpublished, peer reviewed or not...

Not OP, but here is an article that says the size-based definition of droplet vs. aerosol remains a bit vague (the article is about influenza A virus, but I believe the statement on vector size remains relevant):

"There is essential agreement that particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 5 µm or less are aerosols, whereas particles >20 µm would be large droplets. Some authors define aerosols as ≤10 µm or even ≤20 µm (Knight 1973; Treanor 2005); particles between 5 and 15 to 20 µm have also been termed ‘intermediate’ (Couch et al. 1966; all values refer to the aerodynamic diameter; for bioaerosols, they refer to the aerodynamic diameter after evaporation). When reviewing the literature, it is therefore important to verify the size of the particles being studied and the authors' definitions."

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.200...

that's a great reference ... for Influenza A!

some diseases cause larger droplets, other smaller droplets...

I still look forward to a paper describing experimental measurement regarding SARS-COV-II

Also if anyone finds a paper that measured the UV doses (fluences) for N-Log reductions, I would be very happy to read it!

Droplet size is not generally determined by the disease. Droplet size distribution and air suspension parameters depend on humidity and temperature, as well as composition, salinity, etc.

Also medical rated masks that are actually any good against COVID-19 or just dust masks? Medical certification, unless it is sped up considerably, will most likely take longer than the shortage itself.

No, you could not.

What you could produce is something that, from the outside, looks like masks.

Why would you expect that most masks that people are buying are not, already, “something that, from the outside, looks like masks”?

Are you suggesting they wouldn't sell? They would still be masks, just not having a certified efficacy; I'd imagine if you put a pattern on them and sold them as decorative items you could side-step liability too.

Please don't do this though.

Please reach out to your local health ministry or the equivalent. Maybe the WHO?

If it were possible to sell supplies like this at inflated prices during times of need there would be more incentive for parties to maintain stocks during low demand times.

There would also be an incentive to manufacture more times of need.

right, the odds are that mask makers would invest in the bio-engineering facilities to manufacture a new pandemic to make a killing in new sales.

hah. Be charitable, you could just as equally say that there would be an incentive to over-hype risk. This is a potential conflict of interest people could suffer from without even realizing what they were doing.

sure there could be an incentive to overhype risk, however when was the last time you listened to a mask maker's analysis of risk? People barely listen to WHO, the CDC, and their local physician, it's really quite a bit much to suppose that they would listen to the mask maker.

Which is why you don't do it as the mask maker.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Nothing is stopping you from selling these supplies at inflated prices. There is no market failure here.

California PC396 "prohibits raising the price of many consumer goods and services by more than 10% after an emergency has been declared", sayth the internets. Many other states have similar gouging rules.

https://www.vvng.com/sb-district-attorneys-office-warns-abou...

(I don't think I'm opposed to the existence of such laws, but I think the issue is complicated.)

Yes, that is why it is important to allow businesses to profit from costly overcapacities.

Funding overcapacity in a free market through regulation would be even more prone to abuse than most other regulatory projects. Perhaps the public stockpiling that is done anyways could buy in an artificially erratic pattern to reward manufacturers for readiness?

Regarding eBay in particular I think that it is very valuable that they block at least block sellers that haven't routinely sold the product before, to hinder not only opportunistic speculation but also outright theft which is currently an epidemic of its own.

Mask production is not a terrible bottle neck [0] I could have a factory setup within a week with 5 million in capital.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR5GV8shCz0

If the price will have collapsed, that means demand is expected to fall, meaning whatever's causing the current demand isn't a real problem. Is that the case?

Of course! Covid-19 panic is not going to last forever either way.

So there's no harm in short term price rise.

Of course there is, people who need them may be unable to economically purchase them. Basic price theory only obtains under specific conditions like perfect competition, perfect information, fungibility of commodities, and zero friction for market entry and exit.

Isn’t the fact that some people will be unable to afford them (or some other potentially lifesaving product) when they need them a problem that needs to be addressed either way? I feel like we’ll be talking around the problem forever if we ignore the fact that “willingness to pay” is a useful concept economically but probably doesn’t match most people’s moral intuition about who ought to get lifesaving resources.

It works great for consumer goods, like coffee and beer. As soon as you start trying to apply it to things like medicine and the producer surplus comes with a body count.

If people can't afford them then they won't be purchased and the manufacturer will not make a profit. The manufacturer must price it's goods such that they will still be purchased, and higher prices in periods of high demand means people won't buy more than they need. This makes products more available, not less.

Not to poor people, an extremely obvious fact that some people seem to wilfully ignore.

Yes, it does. Poor does not mean abject poverty. If the good is actually a necessity, someone who is poor is unlikely to refuse spending $20 instead of $10, to avoid death.

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