Hacker News Reader

Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

"Everybody stocking a "handful" of PPE isn't a scalable solution to maintain a national supply."

No, but there's no harm in it either, and some potential benefit in case it takes a few days for the federal government to organize a response.

We all assume the government is going to make sure the food supply is maintained, but everyone is also buying some extra food just in case there's a temporary gap.

We don't need to choose just one way of preparing for the unknown.

Also, I was just saying the general public might purchase a few of these masks for themselves for their own use, not that hospitals might rely on the public for supplies.

View on HN

The harm right now is that there's not even enough PPE for hospitals, so anyone buying a face shield for themselves, if that were possible, would keep a face shields from going to a health worker who needs it more.

A couple months from now, when pressure on the healthcare system is lower and manufacturing capacity is ramped up? Sure, I'm all for it.

That is a completely different situation from what I'm discussing.

I'm not talking about who should get priority for PPE right now. I'm just talking about the idea of the general public having a couple uses worth of PPE just in case. Is now the right time for them to prioritize buying PPE for themselves over hospital workers? No.

I printed my own frame and cut the shield a large plastic piece from a leftover toy package.

That being said, if I owned a commercial face mask, I would not feel bad. Hording/gouging is not equal to owning your own set of PPE.

Based on a number of reports I've read about the N95 market, there seems to be plenty of PPE available domestically, but it's all being sold to foreign buyers because the government refuses to institute export controls.

For what, though? And I'm 100% being honest here, what is the specific situation you are envisioning that requires a face shield in your home?

In a medical setting, shields are typically used in conjunction with eye goggles and respirators when performing procedures that have a tendency to cause or be around splashing body fluids. Outside of someone sneezing or spitting on you directly, I can't think of an analogous situation that I come into on even a rare circumstance that a face shield would protect me from.

It's the same mentality as people buying guns.

What situation that could conceivably arise from a pandemic requires an automatic rifle?

It's a generalised sense of "bad things are happening, I need to be prepared for bad things to happen to me".

I don't think that's why people prep and buy guns.

> "What situation that could conceivably arise from a pandemic requires an automatic rifle?"

Good thing that automatic rifles aren't available for sale to the civilian market[1] then, I suppose.

[1] Yes, the pedants will point out that it's theoretically possible with special licensing but it's very uncommon.

Apologies for not understanding the differences between various types of gun and misusing the term.

Still, the point remains - what situation could possibly arise from a pandemic that would require a <insert any type of gun here>?

How about this? https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-gun-sales-asian-califor.... Asians don't exactly fit the traditional stereotypes for firearms purchasers but the attacks described and similar bad behavior directed at international students from Asia on college campuses certainly show that there are people out there willing to attack them based on imagined threats and therefore some level of concern by Asians for their personal safety is merited.

I notice that it's "the media are telling them that Asians are being targeted", not "Asians are buying guns because they're suffering from racist attacks". Again, the belief that people will do bad things to each other when order breaks down is much more prevalent than the actual incidence of people doing bad things to each other when order breaks down.

I'm not saying it can't happen - there are always racist assholes out there. But the media will tell one story of a racist asshole harassing an Asian family rather than 100 stories of people being genuinely nice to each other in a crisis. Because we'll click on that one bad story and ignore the 100 nice ones.

I find your dismissiveness of the idea that racist attacks against Asians could be actually be occurring to be disappointing but not surprising in members of the modern left.

I suggest you invest some time reading a recent piece by an Chinese-American author in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/magazine/asian-american-d...

I repeat, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I am not "dismissing" racist attacks. I'm saying that media will massively over-report any such attacks, and under-report any incidences of people being nice to each other. So we end up with a belief (based on the evidence that we receive from the media) that we're going to be attacked, and not (which is the vast majority of actual interactions) that strangers will help us.

> What situation that could conceivably arise from a pandemic requires a [semiautomatic] rifle?

Rioting, looting, people breaking into your home, police “sick outs.”

See what happens if the electricity goes out or all stores are forced to close.

I've seen what happens when the electricity goes out and stores are forced to close - people are really nice to each other and help each other out whenever they can.

Let me put it another way: if you owned a gun, would "the electricity is out" be a reason to shoot someone?

You store it in your home, then wear it when you go line up for food in case the person next to you turns and coughs or sneezes.

That isn't what a face shield is for and it won't protect you in that scenario.

It is exactly what it is for, to protect from droplets sprayed out of sick people. Particularly to keep it out of your eyes.

Imagine being at the gas pump, and the person next to you sprays gasoline at you. A faceshield might keep your face from getting soaking wet, but if you smell the fumes, it hasn't prevented exposure to your sinuses or lungs.

Except you can't smell a virus.

I'm hoping Doctors aren't being hosed down with concentrated gallons of trillions and trillions of virus. PPEs aren't going to do much in that situation.

For the most part, the virus is carried in the droplets, so if you protect yourself from the droplets, you're way ahead of the game.

"We all assume the government is going to make sure the food supply is maintained"

Do you assume this? I assume that capitalism is keeping the food supply maintained. When that fails, I think we're up the creek.

The government already has its hand in the food supply with all the farming subsidies it hands out. It can either change the subsidies to match the situation, or get heavily involved into the resource allocation as it has done in wartime.

As a good example, European agriculture is currently threatened because there are no foreign workers in the fields. The German government responded by better connecting unemployed workers to local farms, and by changing the rules to allow some foreign workers to come in.

That's just a hint of what governments are capable of. It pales in comparison to a war economy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com