[Animats]

The effectiveness of non-medical masks is not all that great. Bandannas, near zero. N95, quite good.[1] Cloth masks are all over the place depending on material, weave, etc. CDC: "During a pandemic, cloth masks may be the only option available; however, they should be used as a last resort when medical masks and respirators are not available".

Ordinary medical masks are easy to get now. N95 masks are still hard to get in the US. The trick that makes N95 masks work is that they have a middle layer that's an electret with tiny holes, with a semi-permanent static charge. That will capture solid particles smaller than the holes by electrostatic attraction. So it can actually stop an aerosol. Cloth masks and the lower tiers of medical masks don't have that.

It's pathetic that, nine months into the epidemic, the US doesn't have N95 masks in volume production. Prices on eBay are 10x normal. Normal price is under $20 for a box of 20. Where's the "free market"?

[1] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article

[bleepblorp]

The free market is right there, refusing to address shortages and price gouging you for essential supplies. A few people are getting rich and many people are being put at risk, but the free market is fine with this.

Meanwhile, in South Korea, the government adopted a non-free-market solution and has been making KN95 masks available to its population through a combination of rationing and subsidies. Everyone has access to two masks a week, and the overwhelming majority of people wear them.

South Korea has one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and is one of the few economies expected to grow in 2020.

[gruez]

>The free market is right there, refusing to address shortages and price gouging you for essential supplies

It's hardly a free market when there's anti price gouging laws.

[chillwaves]

So if we let them take more advantage of the situation then it will improve?

[gruez]

Yes. If factories can hike prices, then they can recoup their investments faster. Right now there's little incentive for them to invest into expanding capacity, because the demand eventually dies down, and they never see a return on the sums they invested.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22789340

>The common theme is that during an outbreak like this, everybody wants to be his customer. But as soon as an outbreak subsides, his customers dump him and run back to China. The reason? His masks may cost a dime each, but a made-in-China mask might go for two cents.

>“Last time he geared up and went three shifts a day working his tail off,” the mayor recalled. “As soon as the issue died, he didn’t have any sales. He had to pay unemployment for all these people, and he had to gear down.”

[erik_seaberg]

Who’s going to invest anything in solving this problem, knowing we will indignantly refuse to compensate them? There would be stockpiles and reserve factory capacity if only we allowed them to be worth keeping.

[foogazi]

For those that say the president has no power: This is were the federal government can step up and use its emergency powers to mandate N95 mask production

[jasonlaramburu]

This is probably the single biggest failure of the outgoing administration. They forced industry to produce tens of thousands of ventilators that proved unnecessary. They should have ensured every American had access to free (or cheap) N95 masks.

[sagarm]

To be fair, at the time ventilators were being rationed.

Of course the need for ventilators was predicted well before the rationing was occuring, so if the administration had acted sooner rationing may have been avoided.

Instead ventilators were no longer and issue by the time they were being produced.

[roywiggins]

KN95s are easy to get and probably work a bit better than cloth masks (though probably worse than proper N95s).

[dragonwriter]

> KN95s are easy to get and probably work a bit better than cloth masks (though probably worse than proper N95s).

ISTR recently seeing that 90% of "KN95" masks independently tested do not meet the published requirements for the rating, so, I'd hope that is worse than N95 (the requirements are slightly different, but substantively similar), though still probably better than cloth masks.