Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by djrogers | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

djrogers·

> What I don't understand is why there were no nations giving away n95 masks

Don't know if you remember last march/April, but there were no N95 masks to give out in a lot of places...

View on HN

Right, but what about by this March/April?

I don't understand why most functional governments didn't eventually have a monthly care package of "here's your masks, hand sanitizer, the latest newsletter, and your stimulus check".

There was a proposal to do this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-scrapped-usp...

It was killed for political reasons.

This April they're mostly useless in the US because you can just get vaccinated. If you're refusing to get vaccinated, you're probably refusing to wear a mask too.

There's a lot more to the world than the US, and that's really missing the point. "We're out of masks" is a perfectly good answer to "why aren't governments giving them out" in March 2020; it's not a good answer a few months later.

> I don't understand why most functional governments didn't eventually have a monthly care package of "here's your masks, hand sanitizer, the latest newsletter, and your stimulus check".

Partly because it isn’t the role of government to “give” you things you might want while they are paid for with foreign debt in box.

Disaster mitigation and relief has long been a governmental responsibility.

I agree, but by October they were everywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com