Can’t Find an N95 Mask? This Company Has 30M That It Can’t Sell | Hacker News Reader

Can’t Find an N95 Mask? This Company Has 30M That It Can’t Sell

nytimes.com

90 pointswinstonsmith102 comments

> These businesses must overcome the ingrained purchasing habits of hospital systems, medical supply distributors and state governments.

I’m guessing this is the real crux of the problem. They’re trying to sell to some of the most glacial organizations on planet.

The bigger the organization, the slower it moves. Purchasing cycles can take anywhere from 6 months to YEARS if you’re talking big business or government.

This is also why B2B and B2G are such lucrative markets to be in.

Having a bunch of lazy, stumbling giants with basically unlimited money as your clients is the holy grail. Once they’ve been sold, they literally CANNOT stop buying from you if even they wanted to. It’d be a year before they could even get another supplier approved! Talk about low churn.

I don't agree with this. I run ArmbrustUSA and can make about 1MM masks per day, and we started at the same time as this company.

I think they are just bad at sales.

We have government and hospital contracts. But, we are really good at sales. My team is really good at sales. Previously, My President and head of sales ran a medical sales division at a company with 300 sales people. We have about 17 sales folks. And we wouldn't be thriving without that team.

They also might not be great at manufacturing.

There stuff is really expensive. They are selling an ASTM Level 3 mask for $37.5 + $8 Shipping! That's $0.90 a mask delivered.

https://shop.demetech.us/collections/surgical-mask-astm-leve...

I can buy a Chinese made ASTM Level 3 masks delivered for $0.18 FROM CHINA.

How can they win charging 5 times more? Because "America"? That argument is many a 3x multiple :)

If I were to guess by looking at all their photos, it looks they have a very manual process for making masks and packing masks. We've had to semi automate the packaging process to survive (which no one else has done). When we fully automated it later this year we will be able to sell our masks much much cheaper than China can.

Our masks sell between $0.20 - $0.59 which is still too high, but all of our margins go directly into investing in the product.

You guys are so good at sales, your N95's are sold out :( https://www.armbrustusa.com/products/pre-order-n95-mask-10-p...

"If we do not get approval, you will get your money back. You can also cancel at any time."

What does this mean? Are they sold out or are they waiting on government approval? Not very confidence inspiring.

Really off topic, but I'm rather impressed you were able to get up and running so fast. Did you have a ton of experience in this space ? Did you have to raise funding ?

> When we fully automated it later this year we will be able to sell our masks much much cheaper than China can.

Is not shipping from China to the US a big part of the cost savings ?

When things like masks are shipped from china via container, the shipping cost per unit ends up being exceedingly small. Probably less than a penny per mask.

I worked at Monster.com (job posting service) ten years ago and this was essentially their business model: HR departments would be locked into a long term contract of 2-5 years, which was (anecdotally) a longer period than typical HR manager role who would approve a contract like this, so they would often not even be around for a renewal and whoever replaced them would be sucked into signing another long term contract.

> The bigger the organization, the slower it moves.

That is in some ways true. However, the ability to manage a complex sales process is a good proxy for ability to manage customer stakeholders and do the project planning and management required for success.

eg if you can't manage a complex sales process, the probability a vendor is mature enough to ship eg 2mm masks/month on time, with appropriate quality levels, and with the resources to manage production disruptions is quite low. And that's what hospital systems want to buy.

> The problem is getting consumers to their retail websites. At the moment, anyone trying to buy N95 masks on Google Shopping or Facebook Marketplace is greeted with a blank page; on Amazon, a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective.

> “How is it that you can spread conspiracy theories on Facebook, but we can’t sell N95 masks to the millions of Americans who need them right now?” Mr. Brown asked. “I can understand Facebook not wanting to sell masks made by some guy in his garage, but these masks meet strict N.I.O.S.H. guidelines.”

I can more understand the first half of the article, about ingrained purchasing processes in hospitals etc. leaving newcomers with unbought supply, but this is nuts. All the crap that Amazon does show if you search 'mask' or 'respirator' over the last year, and they refuse to list genuine stuff?

I still have a disposable FFP3 (UK/EU N99 equivalent I believe) from a couple of years before the pandemic, it was £1.12ea or much less in packs. Currently I'd have to pay 10x that for a shitty piece of ill-fitting cloth. (It's probably technically past its shelf life, but it can't be worse than fabric that never met any filtration specification.)

> welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective.

Citation? Ther actual written standards of N95 vs KN95 are very similar, and if anything KN95 is probably slightly better. To meet KN95, the mask must be shown not to let air pass around the edges even while doing vigorous exercise, whereas N95 has no such requirement.

This is notable in the shape of N95 and KN95 masks. Some N95 masks look like someone just hit the "circle" button in some CAD software, whereas KN95 masks clearly have effort to actually being human-shaped.

I think the problem is more about buying masks from sellers on Aliexpress with KN95 printed on it which may or may not have actually been tested to meet those requirements. These are the same items that independent sellers on Amazon will end up selling. I'm sure the same happens with some N95/FFP2 masks but from my anecdotal experience this seems to be less common.

As the downvoted comment explains, there's good quality masks coming out of China and there's tons of questionable quality masks. Differentiating between the two is difficult if not impossible.

Personally I am using some Chinese made masks every now and then from a reasonably well known company, but they are CE certified FFP2 masks. Still prefer big brands when I can get them though, but they're still ridiculously expensive.

I'm sure you're aware -- but I was very surprised to find out -- that the European CE certification mark was _quite_ so similar to the younger China Export Mark: https://www.ybw.com/vhf-marine-radio-guide/warning-dont-get-...

Also note that it’s an urban myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export

Anecdata: I saw an incorrect CE mark (presumably China Export) a couple of weeks after learning about it (Dec 2020).

The citation's from 12 years ago and may no longer be accurate.

They even mention CE compliant products not adhering to the logo’s formal specification. There is literally nothing that makes it "presumably China Export".

Ha! Every day's a school day ...

Then they might as well use the real logo as the CE mark for medical equipments also has to include the standard tested for, and the lab which did the certification (for Chinese masks that’s 99% a lab in Turkey)

What's up with Turkey? Recently bought German made masks and they were CE certified by a Turkish company/organisation.

Which one was it? The common one is Universal Certification and Surveillance Services Trade Co. [0]

What I’ve heard, is that almost all the European labs had crazy backlogs for certification of PPE and the Turkish one was the only one with capacity.

[0] www.universalcert.com

CE, as far as I can tell, is self certified. Meaning that any company can simply register in the EU and slap the logo on their product. Otherwise, in the US, the same thing happens with FDA registration. Mask companies claim FDA approval when they mean that they simply have registered their product. Registration does not imply approval or certification, its means that the company declares its selling goods of a certain type. I’ve had the issue of mask sellers even provide bogus registration information for unrelated product categories.

Unfortunately, most masks that say they meet the KN95 standard simply don't [0]. Whilst there was an uptick in non-compliant masks after the pandemic, ECRI's findings for previous time periods were about half of batches tested were faulty.

[0] https://assets.ecri.org/PDF/COVID-19-Resource-Center/COVID-N...

> Citation? Ther actual written standards of N95 vs KN95 are very similar, and if anything KN95 is probably slightly better. To meet KN95, the mask must be shown not to let air pass around the edges even while doing vigorous exercise, whereas N95 has no such requirement.

In my experience, actual KN95s have extensive leakage, especially around the nose. One factor may be that Western faces and Asian faces are different, and my understanding is that the KN95 standard and masks are tailored to Asian facial structures.

For instance, this is an assessment of a KN95 style mask I actually bought at a Menard's clearance a few months ago. It definitely has fit problems around my nose.

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/results/...

> While the above-listed product classification has similar performance requirements to NIOSH-approved devices, NIOSH does not have knowledge about the sustained manufacturer quality system and product quality control for these products. NIOSH also does not have knowledge about the product’s handling and exposures after leaving its manufacturer’s control.

> In addition, this product is an ear loop design. Currently, there are no NIOSH-approved products with ear loops; NIOSH-approved N95s have head bands. Furthermore,limited assessment of ear loop designs, indicate difficulty achieving a proper fit. While filter efficiency shows how well the filter media performs, users mustensure a proper fit is achieved.

I have 3 different brands of what are claimed to be KN95 masks. All do not fit in different ways. All use plastic nose bends, ear loops and either air comes out sides, chin, or nose area. I have 3M trifold N95s from before the pandemic and those fit perfectly without significant effort. The nose area uses metal and dense foam to ensure seal. I think the main seal issue with KN95s is that they are thin, flimsy and are missing some basic features like the foam, metal nose piece and head band.

I don't know, I didn't look into it - note I quoted that from the OP.

Yeah, but the Chinese masks likely overwhelmingly wont meet the standard.

The first batch might...

It might just be me, but even if Google and Facebook were happy to advertise their masks I'd assume they were fake/bad quality if they were being advertised on those platforms - in the same way that Amazon clearly are selling rubbish. Not sure what the solution to that is though.

maybe Google, FB, Amazon are victims of their own 'successful ML algorithms' or some sellers that are gaming the advertisement system?

We should remember that the certification processes for medical stuff are very long and extensive, yet even so a mask that allows 5% of air to leak round the edge of the mask will pass the certification!

Given that, I have no issues with using a fake mask. My manual fitting effort to reduce leakage around the mask will have far far more impact on health outcomes than the exact specifications of the way the ear straps go as required by high grade medical certifications...

It's time we de-emphasized product certifications and paperwork in favor of simply getting more products that mostly work into the hands of more people. Per dollar spent, far more people will have improved lives.

What assurance would you have that a product "mostly works" other than a certification by professionals? If we rely on common sense, we might as well all drink bleach.

Policies written with a more holistic view would say "lets spot check these masks, and for masks we find that is sub-par we will fine the importer some smallish amount that approximates the economic effect of the deficiency".

For example, if the standard says "must reduce particulates by 95%", yet the mask reduces particulates by 94%, then it might be reasonable to fine the importer (6-5)/5 = 20% of the value of the goods.

The key is to try to encourage all products to be as good as possible, without introducing months of delay and tens of thousands of dollars of paperwork for every product.

Huh, FFP2 masks are now available for 1-2 EUR here, individually packaged, and less in packs. They're sold everywhere, from discount supermarkets to pharmacies (where they're a bit more expensive). Of course, prices were much higher a couple of months ago.

Consider yourself lucky. In a certain northern Germany city, they went for 5-7€ per piece. After the OP / FFP2 mask mandate at the end of January, they went down to ~4€. I found ONE pharmacy that was selling packs, so I got them for around 3€ (18€ 6-pack).

You could also buy them cheap on Amazon with no CE labeling or with fake labeling, if you are feeling adventurous.

Oh, maybe they are here (UK) too then, I haven't been to an actual shop for.. over a year now. I was talking just about Amazon UK, where it was once easy to get FFP2 & FFP3 disposables and non-disposable filters in the DIY section, (I bought them for sanding/plastering/messing about with fibrous insulation) and now it's all shitty AliExpress-style spam.

Amazon.de was sold-out around February-March 2020 and never really recovered. Currently there's only third party sellers which sell FFP2 masks in there.

But masks are widely available in pharmacies and specialized stores. I'd try to find a store selling occupational safety items if I were you.

FFP2 masks are everywhere in Germany, even my local Döner Shop sells them and every supermarket has brand ones either as single or pack of ten. I didn't buy the last pack from amazon but direct from the company (medisana) because amazon afaik throws all (counterfeits or originals) in the same bins and you can't be sure what you get.

Where is that? In Austria they're in abundance at every supermarket for 59 cents.

In Czechia we got KN95s for like 35 cents. Altough proper FFP2s are for atleast 1.5 euros.

Germany. I wouldn't be surprised to find them for <1 EUR here, too, I was being a bit conservative in my estimate.

You can buy FFP3 masks for 5-10 quid each (depends on exact model) in UK from specialized PPE stores, like:

https://www.protectivemasksdirect.co.uk/

This is a legit store with legit masks, it existed before the pandemic.

In general, if someone is looking for FFP2/FFP3/N95 masks, search for personal protection equipment stores in your country, not Amazon/eBay/...

I thought I was Chicken Little buying my first masks (P100 respirators) in January 2020. I bought a couple more fancy ones in Feb. Days later, decent masks disappeared—those had to last me the rest of 2020. Around November(?), Powecom masks became FDA approved and I've bought plenty through https://bonafidemasks.com. There are coupons floating around (try slickdeals). The headband style ones are a little more $, but provide a better seal. I also like that they have black as an option. FYI I use a BYD surgical masks ($8 for 50 at Costco) on top of these and really try to keep those to single use. Don't forget to use germ-x or whatever after touching the outside of your mask—static electricity is supposed to help particles stick to the outside (hence a fresh surgical for the outside layer).

I just received an order of their KN95 masks with headbands -- I agree about the headband style. It seems a bit easier to get a seal with, and easier on the ears. I'm pleased with them. FYI, 2021 is a 10% off coupon code atm. I received my package 6 business days after ordering.

That said, was I aware of these smaller USA n95 sellers, I might have purchased from them. But at slightly less than $1/mask delivered for these KN95s, it's still a good choice.

Just ordered 100x Powecom KN95 FDA Authorized masks on this website based on your comment! Found a valid coupon code (DEAL22). For $95.56 including shipping to Europe this is less than a dollar for a KN95 mask! Thank you!

EDIT: Note the N95 / KN95 difference: N95 is the US standard, KN95 is the China standard.

Foreign governments (ahem, government) bought the masks from underneath the US's nose. The USG should have insta-blocked exports.

Not just the government directly, but also a big established network of their citizens: “Who stole all the masks?” (2020-04-03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmRjT74i-c

That’s the practice known as “Daigou” (代购): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou

A pre-pandemic article about the practice, specifically in Australia: “The daigou channel — how a handful of Chinese shoppers turned into a billion-dollar industry” (2019-07-31) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-31/chinese-daigou-changi...

> a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective

Any source for that?

From what I've seen, N95, KN95, FFP2 and others are pretty much equivalent. There are some small differences but none that significantly affect the level of protection. There are certainly differences between manufacturers, and maybe there are more fake KN95 than there are fake N95, but that's not an issue with the certification.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, NIOSH absolutely requires head bands to be N95 certified. NIOSH believes a good fit is difficult enough with ear loops that they’ll never certify them.

Interesting, I am not in the US so I thought of checking if it is a new company but it was founded in 2000! [0] How come that they are 20+ years in medical business and they do not have established connections with hospitals and other retailers to sell these masks?

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0692237D:US

Other way round: in the UK, all sorts of companies were popped up to sell masks to the government by people who had the political connections. Quite a lot of them didn't deliver.

I purchased some at Home Depot recently for $4/pc (they had plenty in stock, Seattle area). The company mentioned here is selling [0] them for $3.75/pc, but only in quantities of 20 ($75).

I wish N95’s did not necessitate the second strap, but hey, it’s better than COVID!

[0] https://shop.demetech.us/collections/n95-respirator-masks/pr...

Edit: for the record, I think the ones I got at Home Depot are nicer. They have a foam cushion on the bridge of the nose and a super sturdy “pinch”.

In Germany they are 1€ per piece in every supermarket.

what do you mean by pc in this post?

"/pc" == "per piece" == apiece

Per piece, as in per individual mask.

This guy isn’t hustling as hard as he should be. If you can’t get deals because of the old boys club of buyers and suppliers you gotta do some guerrilla marketing.

Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555”

Pretty soon you’ll be selling every mask you make.

Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

> you gotta do some guerrilla marketing

Like getting a piece in the nytimes?

> Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

Per the article, most consumer destinations ban any mask advertising because of scalping.

> Like getting a piece in the nytimes?

Back in my day we called that a slashvertisement.

Yeah after this article they'll be fine.

> Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555”

This is glorious.

Hell, maybe start naming and shaming hospitals that are too stingy to buy the masks that are actually domestically available. I'd personally be interested in knowing which hospitals in my town put saving a couple cents on Chinese masks over the safety of their employees and patients.

"Hustling" tends to get viewed as "price gouging". Reminds me of a story from 2006 during Katrina.

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352

Shepperson thought he could help and make some money, too, so he bought 19 generators. He and his family then rented a U-Haul and drove 600 miles to an area of Mississippi that was left without power in the wake of the hurricane.

He offered to sell his generators for twice what he had paid for them, and people were eager to buy. Police confiscated his generators, though, and Shepperson was jailed for four days for price-gouging. His generators are still in police custody.

His crime was obvious: sidestepping Amazon and eBay.

He got a NYT article. That takes some hustle.

Is there still a shortage in the US?

Here in Germany (we need surgical masks or (K)N95/FFP2 masks to go to the store or for public transport) they have been available easily for a while. Prices for Made in Germany ones were (and are) high, but getting Chinese-made masks shipped from EU or German warehouses was easy, and now one of our discounters (Lidl) started selling them for 0.88€ ($1.07) per piece.

I bought 20 FFP2 and 50 surgical masks in a pack from a German medical equipment importer for 25€ ($30).

It's quite easy to get KN95 (even ones approved by FDA and tested by CDC) and KF94 (same). N95 and N99 are not as easy come by, but I think people fixate on those a but to their detriment. My Powecom KN95 and Dr. Puri KF94 are far, far, far superior to any N95 mask I've ever had in the way it seals my face, and their effectiveness is similarly good (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSH...).

You can buy packs of kn95 masks on Amazon with same day delivery so I assume the shortage is gone.

Sorry maybe I missed this from the article, but why not sell to common people through Amazon? In some Asian countries, it's freely available from online marketplaces. The price now down to 1/10 of what it was during the early days of Covid, but since mask is mandatory whenever you go out, it's like staple.

Their shop (https://shop.demetech.us) ships only to United States, Canada and Mexico... so I am unable to buy it the easy way...

I've had a good experience with freight forwarding services like MyUS.com and shipito.com.

It works like this: You basically rent a bit of shelf space in a warehouse somewhere in the USA and get your personal shipping address in that warehouse. Your unique address is identified by a unique "suite number" in the mailing address. You have stores send your packages there and the freight forwarder optionally holds them for some time, usually up to 30 days. Then you can consolidate the individual packages and have them sent as one shipment. I'm using MyUS these days; They ship by weight only, and have very fair shipping rates. I have been able to ship non-medical N95-level masks through MyUS.

Having access to in-USA shipping makes quite a big difference. You get access to a big consumer market, which makes the unbuyable buyable and the hard-to-buy easy!

This is true (I also have a MyUS account)! But then you have a "customs clearance procedure" and some shops will reject non-US credit cards - like Lenovo US - and you have to call support and "fight-it-through" or use virtual US credit card like that on privacy.com... So yes, it works, but has "unknown obstacles"...

It also looks like a typical faceless drop ship company that I’d normally never buy anything from.

No they’re one of the companies mentioned in the article. Hardly faceless.

Fucking hell. Do we have to dig up General Groves and Oppenheimer to find people with sufficient organizing skills to get the COVID-19 Jobs done?

What the hell's gone wrong with the US? (If this were the early/mid 1940s then the AXIS powers would have won!)

> Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks in an effort to thwart profiteers from diverting vital medical gear needed by frontline medical workers.

In their desire to wield censorship to avoid bad PR, these companies are actually hindering some of the people doing the best work (and taking on their own financial risk!) to help. This is despicable.

Why are large corporations so cowardly?

Why do people keep asking this question when pretty obviously big corporations have big PR and marketing departments that when they tell you you're going to lose a lot of money from consumer disengagement and are looking at a senate investigation, so what corporations are literally built to only do and take the most profitable option?

This isn't a mystery. Public pressure doesn't work because corporations "feel bad".

Public pressure to avoid being seen as profiting from opportunists seems to work.

I do not really understand why hospital workers and others that use masks daily for whole shift still use single-use N95 masks and not half-face respirators with reusable filters, like 3M 7500 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zbj3_ezqE). They are more comfortable and fit much better.

My guess is that it's to prevent cross-contamination.

i.e. wearing a mask will protect a user, but the outside of it isn't sterile. So if you come off a covid ward, easier to just bin the mask and take a new one, than wash the outside of a re-usable one.

I don't know either, but lots of stuff in hospitals is disposable, because this is easier than figuring out a system to disinfect & re-use it.

Although perhaps that makes more sense in an operating theatre than many of the lower-risk places people now wear them, all day.

So, N95 masks are made by people wearing surgical masks [0]?

[0]: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/09/science/09VIRUS-M...

In Canada KN95 masks are easily available but nobody in the medical community will use them. I have friends going to work with vulnerable populations using nearly worthless surgical masks because there "aren't enough N95s" even though KN95 is basically the same spec.

I have noticed that Google Shopping is blocking results for "N95 mask" in the UK, making it more difficult to find retailers which sell them. On the other hand there are thousands upon thousands of results on eBay/Amazon, most of which cannot be trusted.

Use ddg in the UK, type "buy n95 mask", 3rd result down is

https://www.buyfacemasks.co.uk/

No idea how reliable they are, but that's always the danger when you buy anything from a small shop. I don't like the look of is as I can't find any corporate information about the store on their site, but it's no worse than buying anything else online.

You can also look for comparable quality masks by name. For example Korean airqueen is still available relatively cheap and they're amazing quality.

No shortage at any of the hospitals I've worked in over the past several months. A regular surgical mask is enough for the average street walker, and a month ago in NY there were people handing boxes of them out to people in the streets for free.

I searched for the N95 masks online for months without success - Ordered 20pc box from demetech and the us mask company referenced in the article within 5 mins of reading it.

I recently ordered N95 masks from http://clinicalsuppliesusa.com/ (no affiliation)

I actually didn't know they were even available, after being told by officials to use cloth masks for 10+ months I stopped looking. I was surprised how easy and available they were.

EDIT: As others have pointed out their website is down. It was working as recently as 1 month ago. Sorry!

> I actually didn't know they were even available, after being told by officials to use cloth masks for 10+ months I stopped looking. I was surprised how easy and available they were.

Your link doesn't work anymore, but KN95-style masks have been quite readily available for at least 6 months now, if not more. Though most of them seem to be of iffy quality/fit in my experience. Sometimes they're marketed at N95, but I'm thinking that's usually fraudulent mislabeling.

I bought N95 NIOSH masks. Like most US consumers I searched Amazon occasionally to see if the market was again offering them to consumers but it took a post here on HN, for me to Google and find a US-based supplier. I'm happy to have them, and have given some to my elderly parents.

> I bought N95 NIOSH masks. Like most US consumers I searched Amazon occasionally to see if the market was again offering them to consumers but it took a post here on HN, for me to Google and find a US-based supplier. I'm happy to have them, and have given some to my elderly parents.

I did the same, but I managed to get them before the supply closed off (I have a box of US-made 3M 8210s that has literally been to China and back). I got some KN95s, but only use them when I'd have used an N95 previously (e.g. sanding).

I had no idea about these new US manufacturers, but if their product is NIOSH approved then I think I'd be happy with them.

I go there and I see

"Only one step left! To finish setting up your new web address, go to your domain settings, click "Connect existing domain", and enter: clinicalsuppliesusa.com"

Ha! Good catch. It was working on Jan 4th which is when I placed my order.

Thankfully they are not valved, people who wear valved masks are worse than anti-maskers.

Some people have actual breathing conditions (pollution sensitive, allergies etc) that require a proper sealed mask, without the valve the seal will often break.

Valves with a diffuser cap that stops the air jetting out are probably the best if you have this restriction.

If those people need a proper sealed mask now, they also needed a proper sealed mask before covid-19. In actuality they were not wearing a mask at all unless they were either Japanese or usually in a hospital/nursing home/hospice and on a short trip outside to see a specialist.

That being said, I have breathing problems and the combination of masks and cold weather is awful. I'd love to wear something that released the moisture. It wouldn't be nice to the people around me, though, and I can just get away from people to take a break if I need it.

Yes. I meant people who wore masks before Covid.

Worse than anti-maskers? At least someone wearing a valved mask is reducing the risk that he/she will get COVID in the first place and, thus, become a spreader. Masks that don't filter exhalations can still contribute to reducing R0.

Anti-maskers mostly don't acknowledge COVID as a risk. Valve-wearers do acknowledge that COVID is a risk, but choose to disregard others' health anyway. One is dumb, but the other is malicious.

there's also people who wear valved masks and don't know about their ineffectiveness.

and then there's people who rage at others for wearing valved masks, even if the valves are properly capped. My wife's had to deal with a few dickheads like that.

> Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks

If this is true, these companies are responsible for thousands of deaths, and should be prosecuted.

There are a lot of questions to answer about masks. Who makes them, how many, what price they are sold for and who to? These question are political.

Early on in the pandemic, around April, selling masks for $7 was considered price gouging [0] and $1.27 was the politically fair price. The tech companies are already facing various government investigations for being greedy capitalists; I can very much see the wisdom of whoever decided to stay away from masks.

I'm watching with interest what happens to these small time mask makers. Their fate will influence the behaviour of people who anticipate the next crisis.

[0] https://theintercept.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-3m-n95-masks...

Here the usual price is 0.2 euro per mask.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com