[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.