[ponyfleisch]

For people who are of the opinion that expensive preparation for low probability events is untenable for elected governments because it would be seen as wasteful:

My home country (Switzerland) has a conscription army. ~160k people, each with either a pistol or an assault rifle at home, receiving regular training for a few weeks a year while the government compensates their employer for the loss in productivity. There are tanks, fighter jets and massive alpine fortifications. It's expensive. Most countries have an army and they are usually sized for an unlikely worst case scenario.

One would think maintaining a stockpile of PPE that would allow the authorities to recommend (and even provide) masks for the general population without risking a shortage in health care would be a relatively minor expense compared to that. And yet, all over the western world, PPE is in short supply, and that is without the general public wearing masks like they do in many asian countries.

[rhino369]

The bigger question is why we rely solely on disposable PPE for catastrophes. Instead of N95, they should be using P100 masks that can be cleaned and whose filters last a couple months in a hospital setting.

They should have gowns that can be boiled and reused.

Surgical masks that can be boiled, etc.

Disposable PPE is used for convenience. It's easier and cheaper to throw away an N95 mask than to clean an P100 mask, except when you can't buy N95 masks.

[nickff]

The problem is not cleaning. The problems are design, donning, doffing, and tracking.

If you have re-usable gear, you have to make VERY sure that what you think is clean is really clean. That means cleaning procedures have to be extremely thorough, and you have to make sure that you NEVER mistake a soiled unit for a clean one. In addition to designing things to be clean-able (which is much harder than it sounds), you need to make sure that they are designed in such a manner that they can be doffed safely. Taking off PPE sounds easy, but when you are guaranteed to come into contact with biohazards, you have to be extremely careful about how and what you do.

Simply put; desiging, manufacturing, and safely using re-usable PPE for use in biohazardous environments is much harder than it sounds.

[cameldrv]

Fair enough, but wouldn't it make sense to have a stockpile of reusable PPE that could last through a crisis? Then if you ran out of disposable PPE you could switch to the reusable stuff. Perhaps mistakes would be made in disinfecting it, but it's certainly better than people wearing substandard masks and garbage bags.

We're now forced to reuse disposable PPE due to the shortage. It would have made a lot more sense to be reusing PPE designed in the first place to be reused.

[nickff]

If you can design and reliably manufacture re-usable PPE, I am certain there would be a market for it.

I design some non-medical mechanical assemblies (various types, for use with electronic equiment), and have no idea how I would design (reliably manufacturable) re-usable PPE for use in a biohazardous environment. As far as I can see, the problems would mostly be in the joints and fastening features between different materials. Some features (such as filters) will likely need to remain at least somewhat disposable, as I believe that all biofilters have a limited lifespan.

[PoachedSausage]

The medical profession used to be well versed in reuse of hygiene materials. Many hospitals here (UK) had their own laundry with presumably industrial size autoclaves and an incinerator for actual disposable biohazards. As disposable bedding and scrubs don't seem to be widely used it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to make other PPE reusable if the facility to sterilise is there.

[rodgerd]

Military spending often operates on a loophole in this sort of thinking; but also Switzerland also appears, from the outside, to be a nation comfortable with the idea that collective action is a good idea (perhaps a lack of Murdoch media or Koch-style billionaires?), while in the English-speaking world we've seen a thirty to forty year assault on the Kensyian consensus that rebuilt Western Europe after WW II, towards a culture of aggressive individualism, to the exent one British cabinet minister describes himself as a "neo-Victorian".