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I can confirm the "used PPE" thing from personal experience. My partner (a nurse at a VA hospital) was given a Tupperware container with holes poked in the lid
by quasse 6y ago
I can confirm the "used PPE" thing from personal experience. My partner (a nurse at a VA hospital) was given a Tupperware container with holes poked in the lid as "overnight storage" for her N95 mask and was asked to reuse it for up to a month at a time. As far as I know this is still ongoing.
I know the cynical take is "you need to stop letting yourself be surprised / disappointed by this kind of thing" but we should be able to do better, especially in a federally run hospital in the USA.
My coworkers from mainland China were concerned about our well-being and started shipping us KN95 masks, even fairly early on in the pandemic. feelsbadman.jpg
- sieabahlpark 6y ago> I know the cynical take is "you need to stop letting yourself be surprised / disappointed by this kind of thing" but we should be able to do better, especially in a federally run hospital in the USA. You're talking about California, the literal state of poorly run government.
- j4yav 6y agoAs an outsider this is basically exactly what I would expect to happen in US healthcare.
- ashtonkem 6y agoAs an American, it has been incredibly demoralizing seeing one institution after another fail miserably. I didn’t have high expectations, but oh boy did we fall way short.
- vmchale 6y agoCDC was muzzled by Trump admin. and a lot of that cascaded downwards. But still, horrible to see.
- sremani 6y ago"Americans will always do the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives." -- Churchill 3 vaccines in record time.. I know J&J is still pending. I want the Healthcare/CDC/FDA pipeline to be improved.. Without American ingenuity the world is a much bleaker place.
- soperj 6y agoYou realize Russia and China had ones quicker?
- sremani 6y agoI never claimed US was fastest in spite of my skepticism about Russia and China, but it's the US vaccines that would get wide spread use in ending this pandemic. 3 is a good number and perhaps more will come from USA.
- jfengel 6y agoThe Pfizer vaccine was developed in Germany. The Oxford vaccine was developed in the UK. Of the approved vaccines, only the Moderna vaccine was developed in the US (and it's actually being manufactured in Switzerland). The J&J vaccine is being developed in Belgium. That's not to say that the US hasn't been playing important roles, both now and in the research that enabled this. But "without American ingenuity" we'd be using vaccines from several other countries (including several more that are currently in development, as well as China and Russia, who have approved vaccines already in use).
- claydavisss 6y agoBut this isn't happening everywhere in the US, just California...apparently "muh fifth largest economy!!!" can't spring for some masks.
- schoolornot 6y agoWas the Defense Production Act successful at ramping up production of PPE? It's been 8 months since I've seen a proper N95 mask on store shelves. Hearing that someone close was going through the same thing as your partner, bringing home used masks and having to hit the black market/eBay for respirators with cartridges so they wouldn't become lightheaded when transporting patients all day was shocking. I think what's even more sad is how few tech companies opened their hearts, wallets, innovations, or resources to tackling this PPE situation.
- justin66 6y agoThe DPA was not employed to ramp up production of PPE.
- Der_Einzige 6y agoWe used it for ventilators, which we later found out we wouldn't need because they usually do more harm than good.
- sjg007 6y agoIt wasn't used for PPE, just ventilators.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> It wasn't used for PPE, just ventilators. And meat packing.
- obmelvin 6y agoMy understanding from earlier reading of HN was that it takes months (closer to 1 year than 1 month from what I remember) to standup a new production line for N95 masks. With the supply chain constraints & presumable demand for such things that could possibly take even longer to set up, I think it is understandable that we haven't seen an increased supply on store shelves.
- 6y ago
- vmchale 6y agoEspecially since I (the general public) can get an N95 online. If companies aren't protecting their workers they're not trying hard enough.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dpeck 6y agoWhere can it be bought from a reputable/reliable retailer? I’d love a link.
- Baeocystin 6y agoNot the person you asked, but these are the ones I've been buying from Amazon for the past two months: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CGZFSZ9 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CGZFSZ9 I've cut one open out of every box I've ordered, and so far they've all been legitimate, 5-layer masks. Actual 3M masks are still impossible to find, but I've been happy enough with these.
- dpeck 6y agoNot to discount that product at all, I’ve got no experience judging those things. But Amazon is not a reputable retailer. there’s no way for the end user of this to validate its effectiveness so that’s why I’d prefer at least a retailer who’s merchant had to sign off and order a product vs a completely unknown company selling through Amazon. I guess this is where we are when all our institutions fail us collectively.
- Baeocystin 6y agoI don't blame you one bit. I'm not happy about feeling I genuinely need to destructively test one of the filters in every box, believe me. I am just reporting that so far, this particular listing has proven to be the real deal. It could also change tomorrow, and Amazon wouldn't update the listing.
- medntech 6y agoI can also confirm as a student doctor we've had "used" N95s for weeks at a time (that we might not even be sized for). Often being chastised for using an N95 instead of a surgical mask in efforts to "save PPE". It's difficult as a student seeing patients with covid daily as we're given even less than staff. Some students even offered to buy their own PPE but we're not allowed to use outside equipment. So, here I am with my surgical mask seeing patients that possibly have covid but haven't been swabbed yet until I take a history. Edit: Similarly to your partner, we are given paper bags for our face shields and kidney bean shaped plastic bins to hold our N95. They installed coat hooks to hang our masks at the end of a shift.
- claudeganon 6y ago> My coworkers from mainland China were concerned about our well-being and started shipping us KN95 masks My partner’s friend with family in China did the same thing for us. His dad was getting chemo and they had their family send a couple boxes of KN95s over to help protect him. Depressing, given how much America looks like a failed state relative to the two countries pandemic response, but good that interpersonal relationships trump all the BS “new Cold War” rhetoric.
- DataWorker 6y agoThe reason we don’t have masks is because we’ve gone all in on China and lost our manufacturing base. If you think this happened in the past 3 years, you have to ignore all data and pretend history doesn’t exist.
- quasse 6y agoYes, it's not like I have any connection via heritage or anything either, but our Chinese friends and coworkers have been extremely kind to us. They seem mystified / embarrassed to ask about the way our country is managing.
- dragonwriter 6y agoYou can just order KN95s quite easily in the United States and have been able to for a long time, and actually I have for personal use (especially during the CA fires), and they have almost identical nominal requirements to N95, but: https://www.ecri.org/press/up-to-70-of-chinese-kn95-masks-tested-by-ecri-dont-meet-minimum-standards https://www.ecri.org/press/up-to-70-of-chinese-kn95-masks-te...
- claudeganon 6y agoI know. I’ve been ordering my own since May. This was at the start of the pandemic when there was a run on masks.
- centimeter 6y ago> a federally run hospital I mean, of course it's going to be a hellhole.
- wasdfff 6y agoIt blows my mind that these supply issues are happening in CA of all places. Where I can go to Koreatown in LA and buy 10 kn95s for $10 from about a dozen stores.