Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnJamesRambo | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if we hid some damn masks next time. We have to broaden our minds about what things threaten national security.

I think the more important take away is the damage of globalism to our ability to manufacture things ourselves. Sure, having a stockpile of masks is beneficial, but having the infrastructure and supply chain continually setup to manufacture them would go a lot further. This is especially true of medicine.

Instead we have irresponsible politicians letting business chase slave labor, and only invoking "national security" when it comes to deteriorating rights or buying ever more machines of war.

Even if we made them here in the US, we still need a stockpile. We used to stockpile masks.

We have the national strategic stockpile for masks in the US. The problem is that neither party likes funding masks because voters hate it. It's like infrastructure spending. Neither party wants to do it, it doesn't buy enough votes.

https://www.onlyonceblog.com/2020/04/state-of-colorado-covid...

>Seems like it’s neither strategic nor a stockpile

(The whole sequence makes a concise and well worth read)

Thanks for link. However, the link is one person in Colorado complaining that the state is not getting enough machines. (There are not enough machines period, even thought he US, per-virus had the largest stockpile in the world).

The problem here is not one of having the mechanism, it's underestimating how many would be needed in a massive outbreak.

(the link was shared more in hope people would read it and find it interesting - it's obvious no reasonable emergency stock could have been prepared for the situation we're in)

Masks break down over time, so they're not something we can safely stockpile. They have a relatively short shelf life.

A lot have expired, but 3M has also recently said that they may stil be used. The expired ones are going to police departments.

Why couldn't they rotate out the supply?

I thought it was the elastic that broke down and not the filter?

If so you can basically fix a mask with elastic and a stapler.

The elastic does breaks down alarmingly quickly (I wonder if this is intentional) -- I have a box of N95 masks I bought a couple of years ago when doing some drywall work and the elastic has utterly failed.

Meanwhile the elastic in my underwear seems to last forever! I guess I know how I can fix those masks ...

I have my doubts about if the mask itself really expires. It sounds like one of those things they stamp an expiration on because they have to. Blown polypropylene will probably outlast the heat death of the universe.

We did have a reserve (and there is some coming out). This virus is using up masks at 4-10x greater then the projected numbers.

We also apparently sent a chunk of them to China early on.

>This virus is using up masks at 4-10x greater

That tells me we didn't really have reserves, we had an attempt at a reserve.

We do. The government is selling them at low prices to the private sector, and states or hospitals are buying at a premium.

Source?

As long as they will last, sounds like some of the stockpiled masks were rotten...

They'll probably be damp and wet after a few months

Surely they can seal the masks with plastic?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com