CantStopTheRock wrote:Courtside wrote:Raps in 4 wrote:
The problem is that supply was always low and we never had the manufacturing capacity to meet increased demand. Masks are almost all imported since no one uses them here during regular flu seasons, because the government tells you not to.
Front line staff aren't running out because of the stuff the public bought up. Hospitals and nursing homes and police departments don't buy their stuff at Home Depot and Princess Auto - the stuff made exactly for the public to buy at retail pricing instead of high volume supply chain pricing for those who use them constantly. In a time of shortage they might try, but the shortage exists because of a lack of stocking and preparation and tighter budgets. They shouldn't run out in the first place - that was not the public's fault.
Further, the suppliers are not cutting staff because this is basically peak volume for them right now, taking orders and trying to take care of their health care and first responder customers. A lot of the stocks were actually stolen IN the hospitals by the very same people who are now short, because they wanted to make sure their families had some. Now they're told not to wear them or recycle, because bringing your own would either A) look bad or wasteful or B) look like you had stolen goods
That is not necessarily true. Our distributor of masks sells to hospitals, factories, stores, etc. They have reduced selling to anything other than healthcare, but there were still weeks were people were buying retail in bulk which led to stores buying more stock up than normal and it was taking away from their supply that could have gone to health care. Just because they do not shop at the same store does not mean it does not take from the same distributors stock.
You are right that it isn't the public's fault that the stock is so limited in the first place
Right. The original shortage is the primary issue, we agree, I just don't think that if you look at the volume of materials that went to private buyers that it was really a large chunk of what was taken away from front line workers. I suppose you could say that if a day's worth of supplies was denied to one hospital in every province then that's kind of a lot, but the flipside is that those masks MAY have been used in a manner that prevented the number of infected and reduced the eventual downstream strain on HCP also.
I know you're going to disagree with that point as you have throughout the thread, but every "red dot" earlier in the transmission change stops every multiple of red dots that follow.
I'll try to find the link again, but the Japan study showed that if they had 50% compliance with mask wearing the spread was measurably slowed, and 80% compliance effectively stopped the spread of the contagion. I get that we don't want the general public wearing limited masks right now, but it is absolutely asinine to me that we don't have airline or airport staff wearing them since we know with 100% certainty that this has spread around the world through travel.
People who handle goods in grocery stores should be wearing them also, as they are likely to have highest chance for contact with surface droplets and could then become carriers and spreaders themselves, at the only place where we know every household will be making contact with
PS - if you need masks at the HC facility you are in, please PM me I have spent the last few nights opening access to quantities from overseas and will be bringing as much over as I can afford.
