Are we out of masks yet?

We show available inventory of masks that ship immediately.

2 followers

We show available inventory of masks that ship immediately.

2 followers

We track the stock of face masks immediately available for purchase, give tips on buying them, and present a lot of background research on the benefits of mask wearing.

Launch tags:Health & Fitness•E-Commerce

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Be very, very careful with the masks from China, especially those claiming to be made according to N95 or N100 standard. There are many companies in China manufacturing those masks, claiming they are N95 or N100 when in fact, they are fake. Just educate yourself how hard it is to actually manufacture them: https://www.npr.org/sections/goa... Also, multiple EU countries are having problems with other protective gear from China as well so be careful out there.

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6yr ago

Answer Socrates

Maker

@carmeli If you check the site, we don't encourage anyone to buy N95 or N100 masks. The inordinate focus on this single standard, when superior ones exist, is causing the perceived shortage.

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6yr ago

Answer Socrates

Maker

After hearing from doctor friends in the US that masks are being kept under lock and key in their hospitals because there is a shortage of masks, we checked where masks can still be found. To our surprise, we found dozens of masks ready for purchase - on Chinese ecommerce platforms, not on eBay or Amazon. Realizing that telling people to "just buy some masks from China" isn't that helpful, we set out to make this website that helps find good listings. On top of sourcing information, we added reasons for why everyone should wear a mask, backing up many of our points with links to research. We're still actively working on this, so we'll incorporate any feedback quickly. Some things aren't fully styled and so on. It's an evolving product.

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6yr ago

Brutal Teardowns

@ytspar Might be worth reaching out to the guy behind https://www.n95breathingmask.com/ - he made a reddit post about a month ago that I thought was pretty interesting - he'd been running his business since 2016 and suddenly Amazon/Ebay banned selling health supplies, so his business tanked overnight. Edit: afaik he had US-based inventory at one point

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6yr ago

Answer Socrates

Maker

@rossdcurrie Very interesting, thanks!

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6yr ago

Answer Socrates

Maker

@rossdcurrie Yes, exactly what we're getting at here: Amazon and Ebay are blocking listings, Facebook won't let you advertise them, etc.

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6yr ago

I seriously question the ethics of this. This is just an attempt to make a few dollars of affiliate links for masks. Surgical masks and, more than that, n95s (equiv. or not) should be saved for medical crew. I strongly suggest to disregard and make yourselves home made masks.

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6yr ago

Answer Socrates

Maker

@samrotenberg 1. The point here is that there is no shortage of N95 masks. Read the site for an explanation. 2. There is even less of a shortage of disposable surgical masks. 3. We built this after recommending DHGate and Aliexpress to doctors and nurses in the US whose inventory of masks are being held up by hospitals (or customs). They used our data to purchase masks for themselves and their colleagues with success. 4. You can buy these N95s and hand them out to anyone you'd like. In fact, we encourage it (again it's in the text). 5. If everyone wears masks, there won't be a need for medical crew to fight over them, because we'll have stopped the spread. This issue we first want to address is that people refuse to wear masks, not that they're clamoring to acquire them. 6. You can, of course, make homemade masks.

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6yr ago

Also, those PM2.5 reusable masks you link to from your site are absolutely useless against coronaviruses and it is dangerous recommending them to people. Of course, anything is better than nothing but they can give a false sense of security to those who wear them. They filter particles to the size of 2.5 microns. Coronavirus is 0.05 to 0.2 microns. There should be at least this information in the product description.

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6yr ago

Answer Socrates

Maker

@carmeli Sorry for the late reply, didn't see your comment. This is not true. Please read https://areweoutofmasks.com/blog... - note the studies indicating that even cloth masks are effective at reducing transmission rates. Anything that diminishes the dispersal of the droplets actually carrying the virus is helpful.

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6yr ago