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Facebook donates emergency reserve of 720k masks
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 7y agoThe fact that they have emergency reserves of masks is in itself pretty wild.
- nikolay 7y agoMore like pretty irresponsible to keep them until up until the government said they are gonna confiscate them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zszugyi 7y agoSource on "the government said they are gonna confiscate them"?
- npo9 7y agoLook at Trump’s press release today.
- KarlKemp 7y agoCare to be specific? Here’s all of them: https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
- nikolay 7y agoJust watch their update from today. Their said: "If you have a stash of masks, we'll be knocking on your door."
- IAmEveryone 7y agoGoogle: No results found for "If you have a stash of masks, we'll be knocking on your door." The query without quotes also doesn’t show any relevant hits on the first two pages. Also: the Facebook story is from Sunday. It’s not very likely that it is a reaction to a press conference on Monday, is it? You and all the other Trump supporters should stop making stuff up and/or learn to link to sources at least after being asked repeatedly to provide them.
- nikolay 7y agoI feel already damaged listening to Trump for over one hour. Watch the update yourself and you will hear it 1:1. I do not want to go thru that torture again! All his "update" could be compressed in one short paragraph. Maybe one day I will propose a Trump compression algorithm as his vocabulary is very limited and he keeps repeating the same nonsense a million times hoping on inducing some hypnotonic effect in his low-IQ fans...
- derision 7y agoLow-IQ is not a choice. Mocking people for having a lower IQ is the same as mocking someone born without an arm or a leg or any other sort of genetic or birth defect that one has no control over. Those who suffer from mental retardation have low IQ. Should they not be spoken to in a way they can understand? Trump recognizes that everyone in the country has vastly different levels of intelligence, and speaks in a way that everyone can understand. I'm not sure why that's a point of criticism other than someone who thinks their natural intelligence somehow makes them better than others.
- pinkfoot 7y agoNonsense, the kinds of low-IQ folk that can follow any presidential speech can understand 'new flu-like virus' instead of 'Chinese virus'. He is scum.
- qot 7y agohttps://youtu.be/YdpxrgXldsY?t=4186 https://youtu.be/YdpxrgXldsY?t=4186
- mk4 7y agoYeh wild-fire.
- scarejunba 7y agoIt's California. We get wildfires. I had medical N95 masks at home as well. Gave them to the hospital when they appealed for them. It makes sense. If it weren't for Facebook not having this reserve we would just be 720k short. It's not like the companies selling these would just hold inventory, especially since if you store them too long the elastic and the seal becomes weak across a large enough sample.
- nikolay 7y agoWhy was Facebook stashing so many masks? Anyway, if they didn't donate them, the Goverment said they are gonna confiscate them, and this was already clear.
- kippinitreal 7y agoThey had them for wildfire smoke, which seems pretty reasonable. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/zuckerberg-donates-facebook-s-emergency-wildfire-mask-stash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/zuckerber...
- tedk-42 7y agoRead the article. It says why.
- nikolay 7y agoIt doesn't explain the vast amount of masks and gloves. They were stashing. I want to see a document showing exactly when they've purchased them. I won't be surprised if it was in 2020. These masks have expiry, so, why would one company stash so many - their staff is nowhere close!
- djohnston 7y ago“To help, Facebook donated our emergency reserve of 720,000 masks that we had bought in case the wildfires continued,” Zuckerberg said in a post, adding that the company is also working on “sourcing a lot more to donate.”
- tempestn 7y agoIt says in the article they were purchased in case of continued wildfires. Do you have a source for the government confiscating emergency supplies? My understanding was that that was only in cases of hoarding and profiteering in response to this crisis.
- speg 7y agoWildfires.
- tedk-42 7y agoNice. Our company also had bought masks for the bushfires here in NSW Australia which they handed out. Sadly there weren't enough for everyone, even before this hoarding craze began.
- Aloha 7y agoTo all who are wondering why Facebook had masks - “To help, Facebook donated our emergency reserve of 720,000 masks that we had bought in case the wildfires continued,”
- epistasis 7y agoWhich is enough for 14 days for ~50,000 people at 1/day. It seems like huge overkill when stated as a single number, but two weeks is a reasonable amount to plan for, especially for reserves at a time when the supply chain is stressed. I wish our hospitals' administration had as much foresight. I think this crisis is making it clear that management in health care is vastly overpaid.
- nullc 7y agoIf you're wearing an n95 mask for particulate pollution there isn't a particular reason why you can't reuse it. When I heard the numbers, I figured they purchased extra so they could also supply them to the surrounding community so as to avoid drama about facebook employees having masks while few others did.
- abakker 7y agoI mean, they're good for 8-10 hours, but they don't last indefinitely.
- DecoPerson 7y agoAs far as I’ve heard, this is what the label recommends; however, in practice, they can be used for much longer. (I cannot remember my sources, sorry.)
- hammock 7y agoWore mine for 2 weeks during the fires when they were in short supply. It was definitely worse for wear at the end. And mine didn't have a valve on it. If it did, it might have lasted longer.
- dionian 7y agoI wish they would have done this a little bit sooner, but glad they are doing it and no time like the present!
- _asummers 7y agohttps://globalnews.ca/news/6715814/coronavirus-n95-masks-ontario/amp/ https://globalnews.ca/news/6715814/coronavirus-n95-masks-ont... Ontario just found 55m yesterday. Finding stuff you don't use often in warehouses is difficult.
- mk4 7y agoAs an Australian the only reason I had masks was because of the fires as well. I think it is still not a part of our culture like in other countries to wear them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- justlexi93 7y agoI love the fact that rich people doesn't hesitate on helping ang sharing what they have during the pandemic. If I am rich I will probably help as well. Let us continue on praying for the world and people healing.
- blunte 7y agoFor a comparison of scale, consider the (rare) healthcare worker [who does not work just for money (and therefore does not actually need the day's or month's wage) who still goes into work to help the sick during this time] to _the Facebook_ who has built its wealth via very questionable means and is now donating supplies it otherwise did not need. Forgive my pessimism here, but I'm not impressed. Good that they did it, but countless individuals of minimal means regularly give everything they can to help their fellows without credit or reward.
- ALittleLight 7y agoWhen someone does something good, I don't think it should be an impulse to point out that others have done better. Donating supplies is useful. Facebook should be lauded for that.
- blunte 7y agoIn isolation of actions, sure. But in the scope of Facebook's normal actions...? Are we so easily distracted by the sparkly costless action that they now take that we forget the several known (and who knows how many unknown) deceptive and harmful actions they have intentionally taken against us in pursuit of money? I'm not trashing them for doing something good. But just as I don't bow to the guy on the street that puts his candy wrapper in the rubbish bin instead of throwing it on the ground, I don't admire FB for giving out something they already possessed and were not having a planned use of.
- sumoboy 7y agoSome guy in accounting, "I forgot we bought all these masks last year, someone tell our leader". Timing seems a little odd with the media clearly talking about the shortage of masks for weeks and this comes out today.
- robomartin 7y agoA note for those critical about donations not coming sooner: It is important to understand hospitals and doctors could not legally use industrial N95 masks. No hospital could accept them without exposing themselves to massive litigation. I know this sounds stupid from outside the US. Sadly, this is part of our reality. The key that unlocked donations was President Trump. Upon learning of this restriction he quickly put into place a release of liability for medical use of industrial N95 masks. This will be in force until at least 2024. Because of this companies, contractors, suppliers and individuals came forward to donate masks. Apple donated a couple million units. I believe this might easily unlock tens of millions of masks as companies evaluate their inventories and continue to donate. Commentary: It is important to realize that the US healthcare system does not have an insurance problem. Politicians would have you think this is the case. It is not. The root cause of our high cost of healthcare, among other things, has to do with the underlying and hidden costs of doing business. This issue of masks is a simple example. Hospitals, medical professionals and medical suppliers live in fear of greedy attorneys going after them for anything from masks to more complex equipment. This leads to major losses and costs and even legislation. And all of it increases the costs of doing business. After this virus runs its course we would be well served to review a number of things, tort reform being a good idea. The other would be term limits for the House and Senate, I think it is beyond obvious these institutions have gone putrid to the very core. It might also be rather strange to those outside the US to learn that in this wonderful country doctors and nurses cannot legally provide their services outside of the State where they are licensed. A doctor or nurse licensed in California cannot see patients in, say, Maine. In other words, we are not a country, we are a group of fenced-off kingdoms with some of the most ridiculous rules one could possibly imagine. Our doctors can travel to Africa and practice medicine, yet they can't go to another State and do the same. How ridiculous is this? That's just another element of our system that has to change. There's more, a lot more. The onerous and massively expensive drug or medical device approval process is another example. Insurance is the last item in a very long list of issues we must address in order to bring sanity to our healthcare system.
- sheikheddy 7y agoWhen I think about the reasons the cost of US healthcare is so high, over-legislation is definitely up there, but so is the arms race between insurance and healthcare providers. It seems to me that the hight cost just is a symptom, and that we should focus our efforts on deregulation so that we drive prices down to competitive levels.
- tuna-piano 7y agoIt seems many companies, prudently, had stocks of masks for their employees. Mastercard donated 25k masks and Goldman Sachs 20k[1]. My question is why the US government didn't have a bigger stockpile of them? We treat national security products with such deference, but yet defense against pandemics has been an afterthought. [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-institutions-share-stockpiles-of-face-masks-with-nyc-hospitals-11584479352 https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-institutions-share-st...
- tedunangst 7y agoThey were used up for swine flu and never restocked. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/face-masks-in-national-stockpile-have-not-been-substantially-replenished-since-2009/2020/03/10/57e57316-60c9-11ea-8baf-519cedb6ccd9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/face-masks-in-...
- 8bitsrule 7y agoHere are two looks inside the Strategic National Stockpile from NPR, the first from 2016. The first story reports the loss of 50,000 state and local health officials. The second from Mar 2020, reported that the SNS 'currently holds about 30 million simple surgical masks and 12 million of the more protective N95 masks....' Compare those numbers to what's needed. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/27/483069862/inside-a-secret-government-warehouse-prepped-for-health-catastrophes https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/27/4830698... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/814121891/why-even-a-huge-medical-stockpile-will-be-of-limited-use-against-covid-19 https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/8141218...
- battery_cowboy 7y agoOff topic: could HN make a rule that any questions that could be easily answered from reading the article will result in a day ban? There are way too many people here who didn't read this article ("why did they have so many masks?") and half the comments could be removed if they had!
- blackrock 7y agoTrump’s trade war also shot America in the foot. It made it harder for hospitals to buy the N95 masks and other equipment from China. So to the Americans that voted in Trump to wage his disastrous trade war against China, then this is partially your fault too.
- derision 7y agoThe virus came from China. I don't see how that's wrong to say
- pinkfoot 7y agoOf course you do.
- derision 7y agoI fail to see how stating the country of origin is racist. I've seen some people refer to it as "Kung Flu", which is clearly and obviously racist. The argument that associating a virus to it's country of origin is wrong makes no sense to me at all
- nikolay 7y agoI also don't see wrong stating the origin of something - French wine, Spanish wine, Chinese virus. I am Bulgarian and on the national TV, everybody calls it "the Chinese virus". There no acts against the many Chinese living in Bulgaria. Even doctors use it - Lyme disease, Marseilles fever, West Nile virus, etc. So, it's a matter of mentality, not how you call the virus. It is the same low-IQ crowd, which discriminate Americns from Chinese ancestry due to some name!
- pinkfoot 7y agoI see President Trump's tweet from 7:19 AM - Mar 27, 2020 after chatting to President Xi now refers to "the CoronaVirus" and "the Virus". [I am not sure about all the capitalisation - we aren't speaking German (yet).]
- IAmEveryone 7y agoDon’t you feel like you’ve lost all self-respect when you joined this cult that continually requires you to pretend to be stupid?