WOT!!!!
Laura Tennant: Canada sent masks and protective equipment to China—and now we're running out
If individuals could reason in late January that they should purchase a mask, governments should have taken action to secure a supply for health-care workers
Back in January, I purchased a small supply of N95 masks to protect myself and my family, after hearing about the lockdown in Wuhan, China, and doing some research on what was then called the novel coronavirus. Today, I’m seeing vitriol directed at members of the public who own these masks and wear them in public. Individuals are being told that their actions have led to a shortage of supplies for health-care workers. But what people fail to understand is that consumers did not create the health-care worker mask shortage — governments did.
If individuals could reason from the limited data they had access to in late January that they should purchase a mask, governments should have come to the same conclusion and taken action to secure a supply of personal protective equipment for health-care workers.
The U.S. surgeon general tweeted on Feb. 29: “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” This message was shortsighted, and directed at the wrong people.
Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
bit.ly/37Ay6Cm
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It is perfectly rational to purchase protective equipment for yourself and your family if it is legal and available. After all, if you don’t purchase these items, someone else will.
If governments wanted to secure a supply for health-care workers, they could have purchased them in bulk when they were still available, or mandated that stores stop selling them to the public and make them available to the health-care system. Instead, the Canadian government sent 16 tonnes of protective equipment, including masks, to China.
And now, it’s too late. Very few masks remain available. Before the pandemic, China produced approximately half of the world’s medical masks. But in the current circumstances, the Chinese are keeping them in their own country. This is contributing to a global shortage, and highlighting our dependence on other countries.
Mike Bowen is the vice-president of Texas-based Prestige Ameritech, one of a few companies still making medical masks in the United States. He said in an interview with NPR that, as of March 5, he had received requests for 1.5 billion masks.
What this means is that there simply are not enough masks in North America to get us through this pandemic. What we needed to do was to ramp up the local production of masks months ago. Now, governments are playing catch-up and blaming citizens for their own mistakes.
Individuals who purchased masks are now being told they should donate them to hospitals, where they can be used by the health-care workers who need them most. I agree: people who are hoarding unused masks should absolutely consider donating them, if hospitals are able to accept such donations. But it’s worth noting that it isn’t exactly straightforward for hospitals to ensure the masks have not been used, infected or soiled after they’ve been in the possession of a civilian.
Donations might make a small dent in the massive shortage, but what if a person doesn’t have any unused masks left to donate to hospitals? Someone who has a small supply that they carefully re-use, perhaps by isolating the used mask for days before reusing it, does no one a service by throwing it out.
Don’t forget: a person wearing a mask is trying not to get the virus. They’re trying not to pass it on to you, your aging dad or your diabetic grandmother. They’re trying to flatten the curve. They didn’t steal the mask from nurses. They bought it from Home Depot, where it was available for sale, and where someone else would have bought it if they didn’t.
When it comes to the mask shortage in Canada, blaming and shaming civilians after the fact serves nobody. We should instead be pointing the finger at the Canadian government for failing to secure personal protective equipment for Canadians, and instead choosing to ship a bunch of it to China in early February. We can only hope China returns the favour, or that we figure out how to produce more masks here at home — and fast.
National Post
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Comments
We should send those politicians ,who decided to send to send those mask to china, send to china with them.
This great groveling and appeasement to China...and he didn't even get our two Prisoners freed now in year two! Trudeau has no honour, no spine and ergo no brain!
I think you just characterized all Liberals!
Just imagine you have a daughter working as a nurse and she could not wear a mask and died because Trudeau sent them off to China. Could he be charged with murder?- My guess is that Canada donated the 16 tonnes of stuff as an attempt by our Prime Minstrel to buy some "good will" so China would support (or at least not oppose) his quest for a seat on the UN Security Council. You'll remember that, when our railways were shut down and President Trump was stopping flights from China, our brilliant, strategic, deep-thinking PM was touring around Africa for that same reason.
Right on the money! Could be thousands dying in the streets but that useless seat on the UN is more important!
Netherlands recalls 600,000 China-made masks from its hospitals over poor quality
Netherlands becomes the latest country after Spain and Czech Republic to claim Chinese medical supplies are defective.
Representational image. A doctor works in a coronavirus isolation wing in a hospital in Rome, Italy. | Bloomberg Text Size:New Delhi: The Netherlands government has ordered its hospitals to send back around 600,000 masks that had been imported from China, nearly half of the 1.3-million purchased consignment, after they failed to meet quality standards, the Dutch media has reported.The faulty masks had already been sent to several hospitals in the Netherlands managing the Covid-19 pandemic but have now been recalled. The rest of the masks have now been put on hold, said an NOS report Saturday.Netherlands had received the mask order from a Chinese manufacturer on 21 March. The masks were of the FFP2 grade, used as a respirator mask to filter out around 94 per cent of solid and liquid particulate matter in the air.However, the masks were found to have faulty filter membranes during inspection that would have been ineffective in filtering out particulate matter containing the novel coronavirus from entering through mouth or nose.Netherlands has seen over 1,800 coronavirus cases and a death toll of more than 600.It has now joined a host of countries that have said medical supplies from China have proven faulty, hence ineffective in battling the pandemic largely understood to have originated in China.According to a Fox News report, Spain is set to return 9,000 “quick result” test kits back to China due to substandard quality. The severely-affected country had purchased $467 million worth of medical supplies from China.Even 80 per cent of the testing kits sent to Czech Republic proved to be faulty, said the report.
Also read: Lesson from Black Death: Coronavirus will transform economic life for longer than we expect
India among countries to receive Chinese medical supplies
There are several other countries around the world including India that have received, or are set to get, Chinese medical supplies as the coronavirus pandemic worsens all over.On Saturday, the first batch of medical supplies from the Chinese Alibaba Foundation reached India, and was received by the Indian Red Cross Society.The move came after Chinese billionaire entrepreneur and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma joined microblogging site Twitter earlier this month to announce free medical supplies from China to several countries fighting the coronavirus pandemic.Ma’s first ever tweet was about sending masks and test kits to the US. In another tweet, he said 54 African countries will receive free “20,000 test kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 medical use protective suits and face shields”.He also announced that said Asian countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will be given free “1.8M masks, 210K test kits, 36K protective suits, plus ventilators & thermometers”.Last week, Ma tweeted that 24 Latin American countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Peru will receive free “2 million masks, 400K test kits, 104 ventilators”.
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