Please wear a mask.

It is not the fault of the WHO that some national governments have had poor responses. And the supply chain that would 'flood' the market would take far longer than the incubation period to increase supply to give literally everyone on the planet a mask -- and that's ignoring the fact that normal economics are sort of suspended right now when everyone is locked in their houses and all non-essential businesses are being closed by government decree.

If you A) are sick and B) must venture outside, then yes, wear a mask. Healthy individuals should not be doing so at this time, however.

> Fucking governments should institute Fucking price controls and ration Fucking masks

> That is a Fucking horrible idea. Price controls mean no Fucking incentive to make Fucking masks. They mean people will waste Fucking masks and no one will have Fucking masks. Take it from our experience in Hong Kong, rising prices mean supply will soon flood the market.

Oh, wow. So many wrong things here.

There's an assumption that there's extra idle manufacturing capacity in the factories producing masks. This is doubtful in the extreme, they're selling every single mask they can already.[1]

We've seen this with the depletion of stocks of toilet paper - manufacturers ramped up production within days. The mask shortages have been for weeks now, anyone with any ability to produce masks, is already doing so at full rate.

What about standing up new manufacturing facilities, or retooling other types of manufacturing facilities? There's a huge amount of capital expenditure (let alone time) involved in such a thing. And this assumes that you can even obtain the equipment to do that manufacturing in a short period of time. I can't imagine there's a warehouse somewhere full of mask-manufacturing equipment.

There's no need for that capacity normally, so as soon as this pandemic is over, the need for that extra capacity will disappear.

Is there any medical expert who believes that this situation won't be resolved (one way or another) within a year?

All that we achieve with completely free-reign/uncontrolled market in this situation is to allow exploitation of the needy. As we saw with multiple cases over hand sanitiser, toilet paper and wipes.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/surreal-frenzy-inside-us-biggest...

So if you're wearing a mask, at least do it correctly.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

Just stay “the fuck” home .

Facemasks are scarce and in most countries they should be preserved for medical personal and infected people. If everybody wears facemasks all the time, the most endangered people will not have masks if they need them.

The usage priority should be to the ones that are sick and the medical professionals.

Using it indiscriminately won't help and it will harm availability to those who really need it.

Masks work if the sick people use them, (that is for the standard masks). For some reason people started to hoard those masks in Germany, leading to shortages in German hospitals, effectively meaning they can't do any surgeries right now other than the most necessary (also we see hospitals being robbed [0]). Also if you wear masks to protect yourself you would also need to cover your eyes. Which of course nobody does.

Germany is mostly not dense enough or has remotely enough confirmed cases to warrant broad use of masks. Social distancing and self-quarantine, hand-washing and general hygiene are far more effective measures without threatening the medical system. It's the same for other places.

[0]: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/coronavirus-diebe-stehlen-50... (German)

On top of that the author is simply wrong. Aerosolized virus is possibly one route of infection, but we know that there is a fecal-oral route for covid-19, and we know that touching surfaces and then your face can transmit covid-19.

PPE is difficult to wear correctly, and if you don't wear it correctly you normally increase, not decrease, your risk.

Public health experts in most countries are telling people not to wear masks (unless they have covid-19 and are self-isolating, or are healthcare professionals). This is only partly because there's a shortage. It's also because of the risks from improper mask use.

I've seen a few people wearing masks in public and every single one of them did something stupid.