Just to add some context: india produces 240 million masks a year, but may need 1 billion a day if everybody must wear them, which requires over 1000 times increase of production. Price jump may result in the production of fake masks (already happened in China) made from the wrong materials or in the reselling of used masks (also happened in China). It seems that filtering material shortage would be the main obstacle in increasing production. As economy stops, it will not be possible, or will take may be a year, to increase the production of the filtering material after which most people will be ill.
I’m having trouble seeing a scenario where we need 1B people wearing masks daily: if things are that bad I’d expect the vast majority of people to be staying put and avoiding interacting with people, in which case they don’t need masks?
If people are home-isolating which seems effective is stoping virus (if we believe China data) - it results in economical shutdown, which could turn into famine.
Wearing masks is less effective—but is is almost mandatory in China where more than a billion people lives. My friend from China wrote that people are washing masks and drying them on their balconies—but mask will be less affective after it.
I would think that the activated charcoal could also be sanitized and then reused later. Could also rig up something to purify the air in your house of apartment as well.
But I agree that some of what is mentioned in these threads might be good to separate the scale of the problem—are we talking about epidemic/pandemic scenarios or near civilization ending events?
I agree with both you and Dagon that early preparation before any rush is not harming anyone as the marginal increase in early demand will largely be noise, or might even have the positive effect of increasing the supply output resulting in increased initial stocks.
The other aspect is most of the problem is localized and then transportation to the impact area as much of a constraint as actual production in the global output reality.
Just to add some context: india produces 240 million masks a year, but may need 1 billion a day if everybody must wear them, which requires over 1000 times increase of production. Price jump may result in the production of fake masks (already happened in China) made from the wrong materials or in the reselling of used masks (also happened in China). It seems that filtering material shortage would be the main obstacle in increasing production. As economy stops, it will not be possible, or will take may be a year, to increase the production of the filtering material after which most people will be ill.
I’m having trouble seeing a scenario where we need 1B people wearing masks daily: if things are that bad I’d expect the vast majority of people to be staying put and avoiding interacting with people, in which case they don’t need masks?
If people are home-isolating which seems effective is stoping virus (if we believe China data) - it results in economical shutdown, which could turn into famine.
Wearing masks is less effective—but is is almost mandatory in China where more than a billion people lives. My friend from China wrote that people are washing masks and drying them on their balconies—but mask will be less affective after it.
Or they can probably make their own masks. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Activated-Charcoal
I would think that the activated charcoal could also be sanitized and then reused later. Could also rig up something to purify the air in your house of apartment as well.
But I agree that some of what is mentioned in these threads might be good to separate the scale of the problem—are we talking about epidemic/pandemic scenarios or near civilization ending events?
I agree with both you and Dagon that early preparation before any rush is not harming anyone as the marginal increase in early demand will largely be noise, or might even have the positive effect of increasing the supply output resulting in increased initial stocks.
The other aspect is most of the problem is localized and then transportation to the impact area as much of a constraint as actual production in the global output reality.