[stef25]

Here in Belgium it's almost impossible to find masks as well, except if you want to pay 70+ EUR https://i.imgur.com/dGd56Ng.png I suspect Asian customers have been plundering online EU shops for a while.

Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner.

[marcosdumay]

The WHO acts like an advisory board that could have recommended governments to stockpile them before the disease appeared.

Whether they should or not is a different story.

[stef25]

An article in the Guardian just mentioned France will make 15 million masks available to the public.

So it looks like perhaps they have stockpiled. Until there's no recommendation to wear masks, any shortages are just private businesses that have run out. No failure of govt or WHO.

[chefkoch]

There are emergency stock piles, but not enough for everyone and clearly we haven't reached the point where we would need to use them yet.

[iudqnolq]

N95 masks are available on eBay from sellers with good reputations for around 2x normal prices.

[DyslexicAtheist]

> Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner.

it's the CDC's who acts on advise and recommendations made by the WHO. The WHO has in 2018 warned about a disease X[1], so the CDC and local health ministries would have had 2 years to prioritize and make sure there are enough stocks for PPE in the country. It's not only about the masks for a theoretical pandemic that may or may not play out. There are shortages in other areas as well on a daily basis which are more complex and require structural cahnges. Take Germany as an example that hires Eastern Europeans as health-care workers (mostly for disabled people and elderly facilities) with salaries of ~€600-€800/month where they are placed on contracts from Slovenia and Poland to avoid paying the local insurance. (so some of the people working in healthcare can be put on crazy shifts under what is for EU standards a slave-labor condition). I won't even mention the health-care facilities in Croatia, Romania, Slovenia where elderly facilities buy drugs illegally because they want to pocket the difference, or where somebody who is hired as a nurse has actually never had any training as a nurse.

I know of some elderly care facilities in Croatia which are run by a lovely Albanian couple that branched out into this (their other businesses is bars/cafes). The wife of the entrepreneur/owner drives a fat Mercedes and goes on holidays to Paris, but the residents are lying in their own shit and swallow counterfeit drugs - also their employees are paid cash because they are usually elderly women themselves who have a lot of private debt - so this is the only way for them to survive.

This isn't whataboutism but an example of the places which won't stand a chance when this disease really hits. They aren't rare either, we just don't see them because it's disgusting and easier to look away.

As you said the price of masks has increased (in my experience by a factor of 10x !!) because people see an opportunity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_X

[stef25]

Hiring practices of elderly care facilities in Croatia aside, I very much doubt that EU hospitals are already short of facemasks at a time when there's less than 500 cases among a population of over 700 million.

That there are no facemasks available to the general public is a result of people plundering the stocks of private businesses.

European disease control agencies aren't even recommending that people wear masks. Until they do and they can't provide any I don't see any failures on their part.

[iudqnolq]

N95 masks are available on eBay from sellers with good reputations for around 2x normal prices.

[DyslexicAtheist]

A gov run healthcare facility certainly isn't going to order masks from "ebay". I agree that they should though if their normal supply chain isn't able to deliver and there are no other ways.