COVID-19 Face-Mask Shortages [v1.1]

Face Mask Workarounds Usual New Window Warning

Courtesy of the Stanford AIM Lab and Learnly COVID-19 Evidence Service
Stanford Anesthesia Informatics and Media Lab
Learnly Anesthesia Learning Ecosystem
Correspondence to amyprice@stanford.edu

RIP

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thanatokephaloides's picture

Is Amy Price any relation?

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

PriceRip's picture

@thanatokephaloides

          My mother used to quip that I could start in Northern Idaho and walk to Southern Arizona and spend every meal with a Price family along the way.

          Some of my french ancestors (female) picked up some Prices (male) as they flowed through the British Isles on their way here.

          So, I would be surprised if the degrees of separation were in the realm of large numbers.

RIP

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@PriceRip

My mother used to quip that I could start in Northern Idaho and walk to Southern Arizona and spend every meal with a Price family along the way.

Being a Riley, I know what you mean! Biggrin

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

CB's picture

"inner filters such as feminine hygiene products for N95 masks is not recommended."

Meanwhile back in China:

The World Needs Masks. China Makes Them — But Has Been Hoarding Them.
March 16, 2020

As China grappled with the coronavirus, it kept the masks it made. Now that other nations need them, pressure is rising on Beijing to resume exports.

SHANGHAI — As hospitals and governments hunt desperately for respirators and surgical masks to protect doctors and nurses from the coronavirus pandemic, they face a difficult reality: The world depends on China to make them, and the country is only beginning to share.

China made half the world’s masks before the coronavirus emerged there, and it has expanded production nearly 12-fold since then. But it has claimed mask factory output for itself. Purchases and donations also brought China a big chunk of the world’s supply from elsewhere.
...
That has put growing pressure on China to meet the world’s needs, even as it continues to grapple with the coronavirus itself.
...
Since then, China has undertaken a mobilization of wartime proportions to expand its output of disposable surgical masks. Daily production soared from about 10 million at the start of February to 115 million at the end of the month, according to the Chinese government.
...
The Chinese government has begun some shipments to other countries as part of aid packages. It donated 250,000 masks last month to Iran, one of the countries hardest hit by the epidemic, and 200,000 to the Philippines. This week it said it would send five million masks to South Korea and export 100,000 respirators and two million surgical masks to Italy.

“In the previous stage of prevention and control, many countries have offered to help us, and we are willing to offer affected countries our share of help while we can,” said Mr. Li at the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing.
...

There is no reason companies in the US cannot match China if they should be so inclined. Of course, profit margins for American corporations takes precedence over the health of the people. AGM-114 Hellfires have considerably higher profit margins than surgical masks.

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ggersh's picture

@CB they only manufacture killing machines

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

PriceRip's picture

@ggersh

          to be sure, but one well grounded in reality.

RIP

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Lily O Lady's picture

@ggersh

I doubt our overlords are rethinking their outsourcing plans.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

PriceRip's picture

@Lily O Lady

          We the people can win, we just have to stop buying into the lies.

          Change the narrative, change the outcome.

RIP

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Lily O Lady's picture

@PriceRip

“TPTB”, “overlords” or “elites” would you prefer “undeserving elites”, “self-servers” or “takers”? Maybe we all could get to work on that. Certainly we have many names for the website we fled after the Ides of March.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

PriceRip's picture

@CB

          It is not capitalism, per se, it is how we do capitalism that is the problem.

          If only we would eliminate the defectors, we could all have a decent life.

RIP

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edg's picture

@CB

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said Monday it will start manufacturing face masks in the coming weeks and donate the critical medical equipment to first responders and healthcare workers — the latest automaker to direct its manufacturing expertise toward the COVID-19 pandemic.

The automaker confirmed to TechCrunch that production capacity is being installed this week at one of its factories in China. Manufacturing will start in the coming weeks and distribution will be focused on the U.S., Canada and Mexico. FCA said it plans to produce 1 million face masks a month. All masks will be donated to police, EMTs and firefighters and workers in hospitals and healthcare clinics.

Source: Fiat Chrysler to start producing 1 million face masks a month

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CB's picture

@edg
away from the US by the end of this pandemic. They have quickly learned how to cope with the situation.

One fifth of American companies in China back to normal operations: Survey

1 million face masks a month? China produces 110 million masks per day and that still is not enough for this huge country with 1.4 billion people. Less than a tenth of the population will get 1 mask per day. Sinopec built a new factory with 12 production lines in 2 weeks to supply the PP material for mask making. Their existing lines were increased until they ran out of room.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@CB

It is overloaded with propaganda and deliberate lies. Same thing with the Washington Post.
Anything written about China in these two newspapers is written to prepare Americans to go to war with China.

Nothing you pasted is true. I won't refute it line by line. I would have thought you would have caught the transparent propaganda. Most of the world's newspapers (except for US vassal states) get it right. The US failed to keep up their national stockpiles of medical supplies and had depleted them up during the trade war with China (faking a lower trade deficit) instead of reordering. This was revealed during the Gates pandemic rehearsal in NY in October 2019 three months before the pandemic began in China.

_____________
China brings hope to Italy, while EU turns its back

The US and China are currently at war. China knows exactly how the pandemic started. The American people will find out soon enough.

Look to the geopolitical world to explain what's going on. Pepe Escobar:
China Locked in Hybrid War with US

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
CB's picture

@Pluto's Republic
on a daily basis since the outbreak and can confirm that most of that report is factual. Of course the NYT chooses their words to reflect negatively. Hoarding is a somewhat negative term but it described what the country had to do at the beginning.

China has 1.4 billion people of which the majority live in close conditions within mega cities (arable land is less than 0.09 hectares per person compared to US 0.47). There are 15 megacities in China compared to 2 in the US. Most of the populations within these Chinese cities now wear face masks by law or personal choice. In addition there are hundreds of cities and towns with populations less than 10 million.

That comes to one hell of a lot of masks used daily.
If you want to view the situation within China during the pandemic:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=face+masks+china+cgtn
For coronavirus test kits:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=coronavirus+test+kits+china...

You can view these links as propaganda, bragging, information or Chinese water torture. It's your choice. Frankly, I would like to see these kinds of videos from the US.

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CB's picture

@Pluto's Republic

The US and China are currently at war. China knows exactly how the pandemic started. The American people will find out soon enough.

I think China will wait a bit longer. It is in the process of making global allies. I did notice the change in how Trump talked about the "Chinese virus" in the last week. There's a lot of power in having incriminating information and keeping it secret - especially over someone as vain as Trump.

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folks in Seattle. Overheard on N95 issue: they recommend just putting them in a brown paper bag and letting everything dry overnight. Virus doesn't "live" for long when desiccated. You might be able to still detect viral RNA on the masks, but the idea is that they are no longer infectious.

I don't know more, excepts to say that I would guess the feeling is that they want to maintain the N95 filtration and any "cleaning" is likely to damage the filtration.

In some cases, folks are putting hand-sewn cloth masks over their N95. Changing cloth mask between patients and reusing their N95 mask throughout the day.

Whatever the case, you have to flatten the curve *and* raise the bar if at all possible. Where the bar is the number of patients that can be seen and treated. More hospital beds are great, but it doesn't do any good if all your healthcare workers are out sick. (unless you are friends with Cuba, and last I checked...)

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edg's picture

@peachcreek

Put some rice in those brown paper bags like you would to dry a cellphone that was dropped in the toilet and the masks will dry quicker.

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