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Comment by nerfhammer | Hacker News Reader

they're not nearly as expensive each if you buy a box of them. I think it used to cost like $12 for 2 or $16 for 10, speaking in the before-time of course.

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Eh, not in the US. I bought a 10 pack of 3M N95s last April in anticipation of forest fires that had screwed up air quality the last two years. They were $40 for the 10, so roughly the price of a latte per day.

Fortunately, the fires didn't happen, so I now have 10 masks, but I have absolutely no idea when/how the right time to bring use them is, and I'm doubtful that 10 would make the difference (my local healthy community is currently well stocked even if there's no available at retail).

Also to those wondering, the CDC says that, when worn correctly and while limiting adjustments, N95 masks can last up to 8 hours of continuous use for disease prevention. So yes, it's basically a 1-a-day thing.

EDIT: Forgot to add the citation

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/hcwcontrols/recommendedguid...

The retail price of a 3M N9501V before the Cov-2 was about 4 Yuan, in mainland China, for a box of 100, plus postage (I used to buy for staff and leave on the front desk for high pollution days) which accounting for CNYUSD at the time was about $70. $40 for 10 sounds high. The current price is an order of magnitude higher (consistent with article material sourcing prices). Pricing seems very demand-elastic, and not only masks, the Just-In-Time supply-chain, regardless of China or anywhere, seems very vulnerable to low-probability (but inevitable, don't like to use the term 'black swan' as it's not, something big happens every decade) large impact events.

I think you overpaid, I paid less than half that the last time I bought a box of 10, which was not at a time of high demand.

I'm sure hospitals in Seattle, new Rochelle, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, and LA county could use them. Really any county. 10 masks would be really helpful

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