That line of thinking would've made sense a year ago, but the problem now is that "the unexpected happened". Now even things that cost $1-5 to manufacture can't be manufactured fast enough to meet demand (which is probably something like 100 million to 1 billion masks). If we can't get PPE to all of the healthcare workers or even most of them (and right now we can't) then there's no way they should go to the general public.