They're not widely available to non-medical buyers because they're still not easily attainable for medical buyers. N95s aren't the easiest thing to manufacturer, so ramping up production to fully satisfy current demand would require a significant investment in time and capital. Companies aren't going to do that without some certainty that they'll actually be able to sell enough of their extra production to cover the initial investment. Nobody has provided them that certainty, so they haven't made the investment. Instead they're (mostly) just maxing out production on whatever equipment they already have.
I work for a hospital and have been heavily involved in our COVID-related supply chain efforts. Six months into this we are still struggling to find a reliable source of high quality N95s. Our standard suppliers are getting us 100-200 per day, but we're using 10 times that every day.
I don't understand why governments haven't made the contracts and guarantees to ensure increased global production over the long-term (not just for Covid-19). We're going to need a much higher rate of production for years to come, yet everybody keeps thinking "Next month! It'll all be over next month!". I'm tired of this shit, and I'm tired of governments thinking so short-sightedly. The EU alone could make a huge difference in this area, but they're so unwilling to actually effect positive change in the world by using their position as a unified region.
Thing is: if the long term necessity for increased production of N95 masks were a no-brainer, companies would commit to building facilities. If governments subsidized producers, and it turns out we end up with more masks then we need, people would accuse them of wasting taxpayer money. Making that call is hard, as companies are ramping up production and articles such as the one being discussed could mean much fewer masks are needed.
“Germany has said it will foot 30% of the investment bill for companies that manage to get production of the coveted filter fabric started before year-end”
> If governments subsidized producers, and it turns out we end up with more masks then we need,
There's no way to end up with more masks than you need. Masks don't expire. If you're worried about the elastic expiring, require designs where the straps are easily replaceable or removable.
And masks are absolutely necessary for the future. Companies can't rely on society recognizing this, which is why they can't blindly commit to building the capacity for it. But that has nothing to do with how necessary masks are for the current situation and for the future. It's just another typical case of market failure, in the sense that a free market won't optimize for the same things you would if your priorities include things like environmental protection and health. This is something that needs to be regulated and subsidized by governments, who are supposed to be protecting us from future risks instead of pretending that there's nothing they ever could've done and nobody could've foreseen a global pandemic.
Also, if a government cares more about looking good than doing the right thing, then it's a bad government.
My company tried donating 120 boxes of 3M N95 masks to our major local hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic. We only asked that the expense would not be charged to patients directly or indirectly. None of the hospitals accepted the masks based on the no indirect billing part.
I can see why they would refuse to do this. The effort of tracking which masks were donated vs which to charge for, would be significant.
Who’s going to track which patient was treated by staff wearing donated masks, and which were not?
And if medical staff were working with multiple patients while wearing the same mask, would they have to split the discount for a $1 mask up between patients?
We just wanted our donation to be a donation to patients and staff, not to the business side bottomline. Since n95 masks are practically fungible, it could have easily been credited or treated as a donation to patient bills (as we suggested) whether it be to divide among X random Covid patients or to a single person's ICU bill. The masks value was around $25,000, and who knows what multiple (3-25x ?) the hospital would charge to patients?
The fact is the hospitals gave us no path toward transferring that to patients and not their bottom line. We ended up selling most of our masks to hospitals for that reason, seeing it as the more moral option.
I'm not sure what no indirect billing would even mean. Would they have to track exactly where those 120 boxes were used and subtract some theoretical portion of their bill that would be attributable to the mask expense? No hospital I've worked at would be set up to accomplish that, and 120 boxes isn't nearly enough to warrant trying to set that up. That's barely a day's supply.
I work for a hospital and have been heavily involved in our COVID-related supply chain efforts. Six months into this we are still struggling to find a reliable source of high quality N95s. Our standard suppliers are getting us 100-200 per day, but we're using 10 times that every day.