[rkachowski]

This is one message that has me really confused. Why are masks being sold to the general public if this is the case? It's as if manufacturers and suppliers are helpless but to profit from public demand and the fault is a personal moral failure on behalf of everyone that wants to buy a mask for their own use. How can medical supplies be interrupted by public usage? Are doctors expected to swing past a pharmacy on the way to work and stock up on the supplies they need?

And then in many Asian cultures it's considered a moral failure to not wear a mask in these times, yet hospitals function. This problem clearly isn't universal, or inherent in capitalist functioning.

[marnett]

At least in the US the main reason is the public hysteria that would be brought on by the mass cultural shift. The reality is most households in the US do not have masks. There would be similar chaos that the US has seen with toilet paper but on a more dire scale because they DO actually help and, unlike toilet paper, when they are gone they WON'T be replenished in a timely manner because there is a shortage of retail masks.

It's propaganda. It is reasonable propaganda as having to have actual PSAs on how to sew your own masks or make them out of materials at home would really start ramping up the general anxiety.

[bitexploder]

Thank you. This is extremely frustrating and shaming individuals who buy masks is dumb. Why are they in the retail system at all if they are so important for healthcare workers?