{"id":26297,"date":"2020-03-23T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T16:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=26297"},"modified":"2020-03-23T12:53:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T16:53:01","slug":"i-figured-out-what-happened-to-all-of-the-masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/23\/i-figured-out-what-happened-to-all-of-the-masks\/","title":{"rendered":"I figured out what happened to all of the masks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A friend&#8217;s son developed a low fever last week, a stiff neck, and some other cold\/flu-type symptoms. He is a strapping college-age lad. She arranged a doctor&#8217;s appointment for him last Friday. The clinic was empty and he was met outside by a nurse who put a mask on him. He was diagnosed with &#8220;maybe a virus, possibly meningitis&#8221;. Due to his temperature being only 99, he was not given one of the scarce coronavirus tests, but he did have a range of other tests. On Saturday, the family got the test results: maybe meningitis, maybe leukemia(!). This will take some sorting out, apparently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m posting this because I think it explains the mask shortage. Before the coronaplague, only the doctors and the occasional flu patient had to wear a mask. Now a mask gets used (and thrown out) every time a patient comes into the health care system for any reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/internal-memos-chief-surgeon-york-presbyterian-hospital-revealed\/story?id=69735650\">memo from New York hospital<\/a>: The hospital &#8220;normally uses 4,000 non-N-95 masks a day. Currently [they are] consuming 40,000 such masks per day, which is estimated to reach 70,000 per day,&#8221; Smith writes.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend&#8217;s son developed a low fever last week, a stiff neck, and some other cold\/flu-type symptoms. He is a strapping college-age lad. She arranged a doctor&#8217;s appointment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronapanic"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I figured out what happened to all of the masks - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/23\/i-figured-out-what-happened-to-all-of-the-masks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I figured out what happened to all of the masks - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A friend&#8217;s son developed a low fever last week, a stiff neck, and some other cold\/flu-type symptoms. 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