Why are all the masks single use? Why can't we make reusable masks that can be disinfected by UV light?
Structurally those masks are pretty solid. I can easily wear a single surgical masks for quite some time.
But would need some way to disinfect it!
EDIT: if everyone wore masks, like in Japan (where I live), then it would limit the spread. If you're in early stages of the infection and you have no idea, but you war a mask then you're less likely to infect other people.
AFAICT Japan isn't doing anything radical to stop the spread and yet the virus is not spreading much. At best Japan asks infected people to stay at home. No lock downs or quarantines. Bars, cafes, gyms and theaters are all open. Life goes on.
What's the magic? Almost universal use of masks is the only reason I can think of because I haven't seen any other measures in the society.
Yes, they closed schools but they usually close schools to some degree due to influenza.
> AFAICT Japan isn't doing anything radical to stop the spread and yet the virus is not spreading much. At best Japan asks infected people to stay at home. No lock downs or quarantines. Bars, cafes, gyms and theaters are all open. Life goes on.
Reports are that they are not testing enough. We can't tell who is doing it the right way. We'll only know few months down the line.
If they don't test enough they still would have a lot of deaths then, they have very old population. Don't think it's as simple as "they don't test enough". South Korea afaik also didn't do full blown lockdown and yet they managed to lower the speed of spreading.
There are several clear anomalies that don't get much attention for some reason. Like these "no lockdown" wins in Japan and South Korea. Also, why is Germany's death rate is so much lower? They have oldest median age of population in Europe. Do they use some different medication, is it something they eat or what?
Wait for Germany to come. I saw yesterday a restaurant full of elderly people. No single chair empty!!! People everywhere in groups, kids running in packs around closed(!) playgrounds. Today in grocery store only foreigners wore masks. Maybe 20% of shoppers were with masks. There is Iranian new year celebration on weekend and then catholic Eastern in another couple weeks. In the middle of April shit will heavily hit the fan.
Note that in Germany registered cause of death is a "first disease", so if someone had a cancer, tuberculosis, heart problems, they are set as a cause of death, even though such person was diagnosed coronavirus and died.
This approach makes some sense, if someone was so sick that getting coronavirus or even a standard flu caused immediate death, indeed the primary reason that a given person died is the condition that person already had.
Not sure why this is downvoted. It seems very likely considering the numbers of death. DE numbers of infected (13k) is between FR (9k) and SP (17k), but the number of death in DE (33) is 8 times less than FR (260) and 23 times less than SP (760).
Right now DE is #5 in term of cases and #11 in term of death. Either the way they count death is different or they are way better at detecting cases and FR/SP have many (100k+) undetected cases.
> they are way better at detecting cases and FR/SP have many (100k+) undetected cases.
This is the case. Germany tests 10k-12k people a day - everyone with a symptom. Other big countries only test 1-2k per day, i.e. only severe hospitalised cases. So the undetected/unregistered case count is an order of magnitude higher in FR/ES/UK.
It seems like some Italian official theorized that Germany might be misreporting in an interview and now it gets repeated as a fact over and over (at least that's the only source I've seen cited, if you have others I'd love to see them - it would be important to know), while a simple look into German news reports shows you that tons of the reported deaths are linked to other illnesses.
I don't have good data for Germany overall, but at least here in Berlin a large chunk of the currently known infections spread through night clubs, giving you lots of fairly young and otherwise healthy infected. If there was spread from those to more vulnerable groups, they're likely not infected long enough to have died from it yet.
It’s also very possible that the government isn’t looking into the cause of death and just sweeping it under the rug. Nearly every mention of the virus’s spread here is followed about “now what’s the effect on the olympics? What will we do without the olympics?” Ever since the last Olympics, they’ve been the main political and economic discussion topic of the whole country. TV has been talking nonstop about how this is the time Japan will finally be a world leader again, the economy is going to rise once more, English standards will be raised so all the kids can “LET’S! English with the people of the foreign country!”, every TV ad is somehow connected to the Olympics and Japan’s bright future and basically everything will be better. I can’t even pump gas without Olympics ads being played through the pump.
Imagine Abe having to announce on TV that nearly half a decade of national identity is meaningless, down the drain, over, done for, and they’re out of a shitload of cash with nothing to show.
People in the west also don’t seem to understand that Japanese news media is closer to that in China than here. Abe is notorious for silencing his critics, having them fired or moved if they question the government line. Press freedom has entirely collapsed from where it was in Japan not even a decade ago.
Covid19 is already causing a bump in overall death stats in Italy. You will definitely see it in case of wide spread in a country, only way to hide it is not report deaths at all. Do you think Japan will do that?
Yes, I believe they will. Go read about all the lies and ass-covering around Fukushima. Or how Japan refused to test responders to the cruise ship outbreak because if they were found positive, there wouldn’t be enough responders.
I've been trying to figure out why Germany has a tiny fraction of the deaths that Italy has. I keep coming up blank. When I heard that type A blood is more susceptible than type O, I checked the prevalence in both countries. No significant difference. I checked smoking rates. No significant difference. If someone finds the answer to this question, please respond.
As a confirming anecdote to 1): A youngish person I know has been contacted because she was in contact with a previously tested person who was postive. Her result was positive too, despite her being asymptomatic (she still is). So now she is in quarantine at home. She counts towards the total cases in Germany.
For more insightful comparisons of cases between countries it would be great to have total cases categorized into asymptomatic/mild/severe.
Here in Berlin specifically, the largest clusters are around infected people that went to clubs and spread it around there. Unsurprisingly, that's not that many sick old people.
I believe Germany reports deaths differently. Last I heard, they are not reporting covid deaths where the person had some underlying health condition and are instead only reporting those deaths where the cause was covid and only covid. I’m sorry I don’t have a link and don’t have the time to dig it up — check BBC or Guardian coverage of the European epidemic.
South Korea tested almost everybody in the country. If we had been able to do the same then we wouldn’t be in this predicament. The US is such a hollowed out shell of an industrial nation that we didn’t have enough masks for our primary health care workers. This country (and its politics) is an embarrassment.
>South Korea tested almost everybody in the country.
This isn't correct. Latest numbers I've seen are 1 test for every 200 residents. That's pretty far ahead of everyone else, but not anywhere close to testing everybody in the country.
The data comes in a couple of weeks down the line, not months. If you are not testing enough (they are), then your death rate is exponential 14 days lagged. Japan is clearly doing a good job.
Very good point. I think it's closer to 21 days lagged, because the vast majority (95th percentile) have a 6 day incubation period and a shorter low symptom to death period, but regardless it is clearly not months.
> Why are all the masks single use? Why can't we make reusable masks that can be disinfected by UV light?
Probably because, in normal cases, it's easier to manage contamination with disposable items than items that need to be disinfected. If you can't disinfect, there's no ambiguity about whether the disinfection was thorough enough.
I think they may be able to be disinfected by UV light:
> UVGI, ethylene oxide (EtO), and VHP were found to be the most promising decontamination methods; however, concerns remain about the throughput capabilities for EtO and VHP. Further research is needed before any specific decontamination methods can be recommended.
This is also worth noting:
> It was also found that decontamination using an autoclave, 160°C dry heat, 70% isopropyl alcohol, and soap and water (20-min soak) caused significant degradation to filtration efficiency.
From what I've read, soft masks like surgical ones are OK for a few hours, then they gradually get wet by sucking moisture and saliva from our breath and stop being effective.
Most masks in Asia are simple cloth. You can make them yourself. Not as good as a N95, but they cut down smog and infection risk and are affordable. Even just a scarf helps if you insist on being fashion conscious. Yet nobody wears them, because we have a shortage of ones good enough to be worn in infection wards.
> Why are all the masks single use? Why can't we make reusable masks that can be disinfected by UV light?
There has been no incentive for reusable masks. By not reusing the mask, there is zero chance of it transmitting infection to other patients. The policy makes sense if you are rich and not having a shortage. Hopefully the hospitals have been smart enough to not incinerate the used masks, because even recycled ones are better than a handkerchief.
There are a lot of things about this pandemic that have left me depressed.
But the fact that as the world's richest country, we don't even have the administrative ability to keep a national emergency stockpile of essential medical supplies like face masks to get to hospitals immediately is just... I can't even.
By sheer coincidence, I happened to spend a week in Mexico City the day swine flu hit it, a decade ago. For the next several days, there were policemen everywhere distributing masks to the public. Instant response, zero shortage.
I am genuinely curious what the root cause is here, if you did a "five whys" analysis. Not a knee-jerk thing, but the real answer.
Is it that political squabbling has left things unfunded? Unappointed administrators have left things undone, unmaintained, or backlogged? Was it a conscious decision to decentralize and expect each hospital to be responsible for maintaining its own emergency supply? A belief that supply chains would handle it and stockpiling not needed? Is there a stockpile somewhere that isn't being released?
I'm really looking forward to a newspaper exposé on this one, because it's a true scandal.
From what I read, it seems there was a cache of N95 respirators in the Strategic National Stockpile.
However, it was depleted during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak and never replenished. Instead, their budget was used for what they thought were more pressing concerns at the time — stockpiling drugs/equipment for other emerging diseases.
No, it's not a cost issue. But I suspect that it was a consequence of meeting fixed cost reduction targets, and being something where cutting had no immediate impact.
Privatization means surplus gets extracted to investors, rather than saved for good times.
Pervasive managerial culture causes oversight to become opaque, phrasing it in terms of vague financials instead of specific structure by domain experts.
Economic annealing makes margins thinner and thinner ("cost cutting"), leaving no slack for any change in conditions.
These trends are happening to individual private institutions, as well as at the government level. Stockpiling masks is impossible if it's no longer in your vocabulary.
As soon as a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric. The market is a large part of our national religion, appointing metrics supreme in a circular fashion.
Isn't it stunning that even three months ago, no one in the federal disaster preparation programs thought about supply chains for masks?
I simply don't know how to process the news that we both waste $1 trillion dollars per year on our military, and we haven't built a $5m (or hell, $50m) machine that can allow us to totally source N95 masks from the raw materials up. Does Walmart seriously think more deeply about supply chains than our disaster prep and military?
In the news it was said that normal procedures require about 30 masks per IC patient per day. That’s a lot of masks to stockpile and even then it wouldn’t last too long.
Still difficult to understand how in Japan everyone wears these masks every day and in the West they can’t be produced.
> But the fact that as the world's richest country...
It's at times like these you should question whether it really is the "world's richest country". I'm sure you can find certain metrics where it is, but that's irrelevant if the country is unable to respond to disasters like a hurricane or an epidemic.
Ontario (Canada) stockpiled a lot after the whole SARS thing. Unfortunately they never planned rotating the supply or budgeted for it. So out of the 55 million masks we stocked, 80% have expired.
I'm certain the people unnecessarily infected with Covid-19 will be glad, as they pass away, that the cough that killed them wasn't suppressed by an out-of-date mask.
"Expired" might mean that the mask material has disintegrated and could itself be sucked into the lungs. Or perhaps it means that fungal infections could have grown in the masks. Or maybe the government really made a decision based on short term thinking and tossed the masks to make room for piles of salt or something. Or maybe the cost of storing masks really isn't worth it because there's lots of things that can decimate society (nuclear war?) and we needed to more urgently spend money there. Who knows, right?
"Expired" mostly seems to mean that no-one has tested that they still meet specs beyond that date, because there's no commercial incentive to do so. Similar thing with expiry dates on many medicines.
Along those lines, Meltblown fabric used in N95 respirators is made from plastic by some incredibly high tech machines. Each costing $5m per machine (line): https://www.reicofil.com/en/pages/meltblown_lines
You’re absolutely right. When a mask is expired, it should not be used. There is a reason for the expiration date and it’s not just for profiteering or some malicious motive.
Lot of expiration dates you see in medicines is FDA regulated and should be taken seriously.
Some expiration dates are important. Many, perhaps most, are arbitrary, fake, or ultra-conservative – optimized to minimize liability & maximize repurchases in non-emergency situations.
An expired mask will almost certainly be better than no mask. And especially so stored well with no visible degradation – it's heat & contamination by elements that could jeopardize their essential properties.
(Some N95 masks I bought during last year's northern California fires are individually sealed in cellophane with no expiration date. Stored in a cool, dry place they'd likely be fine decades from now. If some governments bought flakier masks in more-fragile packaging with early expiration dates, that's on them.)
As a consumer, how do you know which ones are to trust and which ones to not?
How do you know that your N95 mask is “fine”? Ultra fine submicron particles in your lungs can lead to a lot of problems. These fibers are essentially plastic.
How does one know anything's "fine"? Your senses & accumulated evidence.
Let's say it's the Zombie Uprising of 2040, and I open a well-stored, individually-wrapped N95 mask from 20 years ago.
It's got no expiration date on it (as per the ones I bought last year), & it looks good, & doesn't give off any dust, & it smells the same as I recall new masks smelling. I'll figure that's "fine" – unless & until someone has specifically shared some study demonstrating their dangerous-yet-imperceptible degradation.
Is there such a study, or is this just "there be dragons" fear-of-the-unknown?
> Lot of expiration dates you see in medicines is FDA regulated and should be taken seriously.
This is not true. The FDA dates are ultra-conservative for liability reasons. The military has done a lot of research (well, asked other people to do research) on this, and found that the vast majority of "expired" medicine is perfectly fine:
> To save money on regularly replacing its drug stockpile, in 1985 the US Air Force asked the FDA to test some products. Since then, the FDA has found that 90% of over 100 prescription and over-the-counter drugs tested could be used safely past their expiration date, a Pentagon spokesman told the Associated Press, adding that the dates tended to be very conservative. Products were tested by either the manufacturer or the FDA, but always with agency supervision.
I speak from experience. Most expiration dates for this kind of thing are absolutely meaningless. I see expiration dates for sealed glass containers of water, methanol, dry chemicals stored at -80C, etc. It is all complete bull.
That's probably because there's a legal obligation to put an expiration date on it. Where I live all consumables have to have an expiration date so there is a best before date on table salt. Salt.
Most likely this is because it's cheaper and easier to put an expiration date on everything rather than discussing the exceptions on a case by case basis.
Why would "bioterrorism scale" & "pandemic scale" be different, especially if a bioterror agent was crafted to be contagious (& thus create pandemic conditions)?
A bioterrorist cell would not have the resources to craft a perfectly engineered biological weapon. They'd be more likely to have access to limited quantities of some pre-existing biological agent (like anthrax, say). So what you'd see in that scenario is attacks that cause a bunch of casualties in a few locations in one big splash, and then quickly peter out after that.
It's like, what's the difference between a terrorist nuclear attack and a full-scale nuclear war? In the former scenario, you're talking a small number of low-yield devices triggered in one country; the rest of the world still stands able to provide assistance. In the latter scenario, there's nobody left to help who hasn't also been blown to ashes.
Unfortunately putting incompetent people in charge of the Federal government has had predictable results -- We don't have enough masks (they're sending 1/10th the number that states are requesting) and the majority of the stockpiled gear is expired:
You might get flagged for flame war comment, despite of making too much sense. I’m with you. There are certain things that I, too, want to rant about but we’ve created a soft spoken courteous society where falsehood and mediocrity prevails - some of it essential for us to be able to have free speech but sigh... there are so many things in the world that are profoundly fucked up. My guess for blaming all of this is on education. Uneducated or poorly educated people do not set a good course for the country to propel into the future.
Isn't the reason obvious? Healthcare in the US is an insanely profitable and powerful business. If everybody gets infected, tens of millions will need expensive treatment the rest of their lives. Healthcare will make tens of trillions dollars. Remember the anecdote that there are no laws that big capital wouldn't break for the 3x profit? Here we are talking about profits comparable with the entire world's wealth. We have an opportunity to witness this sociopathic system in its nature state: the virus needs 1-2 months to spread everywhere and during this short period, the healthcare system is going to openly block any attempts to prevent its spread. After that it's going to open the gates and let the tests, masks and vaccines flood the market.
There aren't "tens of trillions of dollars" people can spend on healthcare. Making everyone sick collapses the economy, and these companies would be negatively impacted by it.
Face masks are running out in many countries, not just the US. This isn't really a product of the atrocious healthcare system the US has, it's just a product of not being well-prepared for disaster scenarios.
Think about how most companies don't check whether their backups work. Now, replace "working backups" with "stocked-up pandemic supplies".
You don't need to wait to do some basic logic checking on your post.
You said it yourself: "Here we are talking about profits comparable with the entire world's wealth". What do you exactly think is going to happen if americans try to spend "the entire world's wealth" on health care?
I don't believe your implications but even I could make a more convincing case for them than that.
Stockpiles weren’t replenished under the Obama admin. Unless he passed a tax cut I missed, you can blame him for the de-prioritization of mask stockpiles. Let’s not forget the CDC has been working on “diseases” such as gun violence and climate change. They should have stuck to their core competency of infectious diseases.
We’re almost 80% into Trump’s term. Why blame Obama for it? What stopped Trump from doing the right thing? His poor tweeting habit? Let’s face it, this administration is ill prepared for such an event. This will cost them dearly in November.
> Let’s face it, this administration is ill prepared for such an event. This will cost them dearly in November.
That still remains to be seen. Right now the states with the most cases (CA, WA, NY, see [0]) are firmly Democrat, with much fewer cases in Republican and swing states.
It's possible that the number of cases in those states won't rise to critical numbers, and thus have limited effect on his reelection odds.
I'm not blaming anyone. I'm merely pointing out that at the moment, Republican areas don't have as many cases, and thus don't really have a reason to have doubts about the current Republican leadership.
This can be seen in polls of how the current administration is handling the Coronavirus [0], with an extremely sharp divide between Republicans and Democrats. The vast majority of Republicans approve of the current administration and their handling of it, whereas very few Democrats do.
This, of course, may change significantly between now and election time. The polls quoted by fivethirtyeight are also from early in March, and the public opinion may have shifted since then.
You're "merely" ignoring the confounding reason why Republican-leaning areas have fewer cases, as pointed out by the parent post.
From your own reference:
> This party-line split isn’t that surprising, though: According to experts, many public health issues — which are seemingly nonpartisan — have become increasingly polarizing.
So no surprise that Republicans think their guy's doing good, and Democrats think he's doing badly.
It's surprising (and a little disappointing really) that 538 didn't seem to consider where independents split on it.
> You're "merely" ignoring the confounding reason why Republican-leaning areas have fewer cases, as pointed out by the parent post.
Can you explain to me how that's relevant here? The grandparent post said that "This will cost them dearly in November," which is not borne by evidence at this point in time.
If you have evidence that points to the fact that Republicans or independents are considering voting Democrat based on this issue, I'd love to hear it.
>> Most urban counties are blue. Cannot blame Dems for infectious disease based on density of cases.
GP asserted that incidence of SARS-CoV-2 didn't correlate with majority voting inclination.
> If you have evidence that points to the fact that Republicans or independents are considering voting Democrat based on this issue, I'd love to hear it.
If you have any proof that Republicans or independents are more inclined to vote, or to vote Republican, as a direct consequence of the Republicans' handling of this pandemic, I'd love to hear it.
On the basis that the pandemic is likely to be the causal factor in a global recession, there's plenty of evidence that would factor negatively in the US election [1]
> the fact that independents appear persuadable on the economy is a point in favor of the theory that a recession would indeed damage his reelection chances.
It's worth noting that this is backwards in function of the surgical masks. The surgical mask which strap on over the nose and mouth are about preventing the wearer from spreading disease by catching the exhaled droplets and crud. They help for inhaling, but lots of inhaled air gets in around the edges. It's right there in the name "surgical mask", you wear it in surgeries to avoid infecting the patient.
The positive pressure mask is about providing only safe air to the wearer, protecting them from others.
The passive respirator I wear when sanding or working with solvents is P100 (P means tolerates oil, N means doesn't and the 100 is better than the 95 you see in N95), but it is also backwards. It protects my airways, but has an exhale valve which lets my lung leavings right out into the atmosphere, and it does nothing for my eyes.
It seems literally to be designed to expel the air within the mask and replace it with external air. Which is the opposite of what most masks aim to achieve (contain droplets within the mask to prevent them from reaching others), and would seem to increase the risk to people nearby.
Even if it reduces the risk of contamination from a direct "cough in the face" from 100% to 95%, when facing a disease with exponential progression, every little bit helps.
So many people in both national media and social media parroting the info that masks which are not perfect or not perfectly fitted are worthless, when in reality a smaller viral load (such as a partially blocked cough or a percentage of droplets being blocked) can actually lead to lower mortality.
I've been wearing a homemade mask when I go out to the grocery store. I think of it as a last line of defense if someone should cough in my direction. I know the virus is .02 microns but it's being carried in a droplet of liquid that's considerable larger and may get caught by the two layers of dish cloth with a sheet from an air filter between them. I sewed it to fit securely around my nose and mouth and it extends all the way around the sides of my face.
Actual paper comparing homemade masks said they were about 70-80% as effective as a commercial N95 mask. Both are equally effective at preventing you from touching your mouth and nose.
At the very least food handlers should have been wearing masks since the beginning of this. Before all the restaurants closed I didn't see any food handlers wearing masks.
It's common in China for food handlers including waitresses) to wear masks, and or a face shield.
I know China doesn't have their act together on many areas of health and sanitation. But we should adopt good practices and remove the stigma in the US that mask = bad.
Agreed. I think hand hygiene in the west is probably better (I’ve never seen anyone use hand sanitizer in China, and saw more people leaving the restroom without washing their hands - anecdotal) but China is definitely better about respiratory precautions. And certainly China acted much quicker than most western countries have in slowing the spread. From in-law family I have in China, there also were no food or home food shortages like there are in many western countries now for unclear reasons. Unclear if there is just lack of hoarding behavior or if the stores and/or government immediately restricted panic buying.
The only illogical thing to me here (in the current moment, what do we do now?) is - why are administrators doing this in such a hacky way? We have a whole country with many, many ways of producing different types of products.
Why isn't a proper manufacturing operation at a paper company,
quilt company, halloween costume company, etc etc etc producing a big volume of hacked masks to be distributed to tons of hospitals?
What you say is an argument from ignorance...but anyway: you should not imply intent if incompetence works as well. And the latter is strong in.the current US government;)
I've asked this question every single day.
Even w/o government intervention, a competent CEO would say "Hey there's a huge global demand for my product, and it'll likely be a domestic demand. Lets crank out these health products".
The US closed and withdrew all their employees from the US Consulate in Wuhan on Jan 26th. Can't say we didn't know it was serious.
Masks shortage have been known for a while. The tinfoil hat in my says because the US wants this to spread. I have no other logical explanation.
As for doing fit testing at home, using cigarette smoke might be helpful:
"... it was found that tobacco smoke as it comes from a cigarette is an extremely concentrated aerosol with a relatively stable distribution of sizes ranging from 0.1 to 1.0 micron, peaked between 0.2 and 0.25 micron."
I was hoping this covered how to sanitize them (I had a couple N95s in storage that I've been reusing when out shopping. I live in Redmond/Kirkland, the initial epicenter). I've heard some hospitals are lightly bleaching, and I'm curious if my Everclear sprays would degrade the barriers.
Since alcohol helps, I suspect soaking them in 70% ethyl or isopropyl alcohol and letting them dry should work for coronavirus at least. I reckon alcohol will also do less damage to the mask than bleach.
If you want to try both alcohol and bleach just don't mix alcohol and bleach at the same time as that will create chloroform.
"The new coronavirus is sensitive to heat. It can effectively inactivate the new coronavirus by heating for 30 minutes at 56 degrees Celsius. Therefore, the single dry heat sterilization (70 degrees Celsius heating for 30 minutes) can effectively inactivate the virus without affecting the protective function of the mask."
Thank you so much!! Alcohol can cause crazing or stiffening in some plastics, so I worried about potential foams in the filters.
In fact, that was covered by your article:
2. The disinfection method of spraying alcohol on the mask will destroy the electrostatic absorption of the mask, causing filtering efficiency of the mask lowering below 95%.
How is it possible that our hospitals have crapped out 2 weeks into the ordeal with fewer than 10K patients? We are spending 3.6 _trillion_ dollars on this shit _per year_. Those masks should be available by the metric ton and sewn with gold thread at this price.
Move ventilators to where they're needed then, maybe? Move patients elsewhere? Just a thought. It can't be that the formidable US healthcare system is incapable of handling 9500 cases nationwide, no matter the severity.
One projection has, even with “flattening the curve” with three months of fairly strict restrictions, peak caseload in the US at 8× total existing capacity. Moving stuff around lets you change which locality is the first to be overwhelmed, but doesn't change much else.
> It can't be that the formidable US healthcare system
The US healthcare system is notably fragile, not formidable.
> The US healthcare system is notably fragile, not formidable.
Citation needed. I've seen numbers that suggest the US has 2.5x ICU beds per capita compared to European average. It also costs 3.6 _trillion_ dollars a year. Surely at least some of this money contributes to it being less "fragile"?
> I've seen numbers that suggest the US has 2.5x ICU beds per capita compared to European average.
The number per capita isn't the key thing, the number in excess of normal use available per capita is. If the US has and uses more because it is worse at keeping it's population off ventilators normally, that doesn't help.
> It also costs 3.6 _trillion_ dollars a year. Surely at least some of this money contributes to it being less "fragile"?
No, the cost is directly a consequence of the main source of the fragility, a financing structure that, among other inefficiencies, promotes micro-optimizations around short-run, single-actor financial efficiency in a system with multiple no cooperating actors rather than systemic efficiency where it promotes any kind of optimization at all.
Structurally those masks are pretty solid. I can easily wear a single surgical masks for quite some time.
But would need some way to disinfect it!
EDIT: if everyone wore masks, like in Japan (where I live), then it would limit the spread. If you're in early stages of the infection and you have no idea, but you war a mask then you're less likely to infect other people.
AFAICT Japan isn't doing anything radical to stop the spread and yet the virus is not spreading much. At best Japan asks infected people to stay at home. No lock downs or quarantines. Bars, cafes, gyms and theaters are all open. Life goes on.
What's the magic? Almost universal use of masks is the only reason I can think of because I haven't seen any other measures in the society.
Yes, they closed schools but they usually close schools to some degree due to influenza.