Posted on 03/21/2020 6:27:58 AM PDT by Libloather
Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that new legislation will allow tens of millions more protective masks to reach U.S. healthcare workers each month, beginning immediately, but it was still unclear whether total production will be enough to meet demand.
New legislation signed Wednesday provides manufacturers of N95 face masks protection against lawsuits when selling certain masks to healthcare workers, Pence said. That will free producers including 3M and Honeywell to sell tens of millions more masks per month to hospitals, Pence said, helping alleviate alarming shortages that have surfaced in recent weeks amid the coronavirus crisis.
“They are available now,” Pence said when asked when the extra masks would hit the market.
The change means Minnesota-based 3M will now be free to sell 420 million masks a year to the U.S. healthcare sector, Pence said.
And Honeywell of Charlotte, N.C., will soon boost N95 mask output in the U.S. by an additional 120 million masks per year, Pence said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The standard mask design is deficient IMHO. I hate the rebreathing effect.
It’s the exhalation resistance. That is more tiring to the body than inhalation. Some masks are fitted with exhalation valves which help greatly.
Why is legislation necessary to *allow* companies to manufacture new masks?
They are not under threat of lawsuit so that allows more production?
I don’t quite get it. Nothing stopped them from producing and selling before except demand.
Good idea!
They told us they had a stockpile of 49 million. Now is the time to use them.
Good tip.
I had been going through a lot of N95 masks (a couple a day)
working with fiberglass on my project boat. It got expensive.
Reading between the lines I believe it was government regulation that prevented them selling without FDA approval.
President Trump still has a long way to go cleaning out stupid bureaucratic rules.
Well, he’s doing it. More power to him.
He's doing this under emergency authority, which is why he can get away with it now.
“....except demand.”
You’re right. But the only things that are not demand driven are those things that exist period...like pet rocks.
rwood
Why haven’t the masks reached the hospitals yet?
I think it was a liability issue. I’m sure they’re in the pipeline now.
Neat thing about western movies the bad guys always wore masks never got sick just shot.
I had forgotten I had designed and obtained parts for a powered back pack filtered breather. I have some pleated 12”x14” HEPA filters, a 12 volt CPAP, tubing and a NATO canister type gas mask.
I wanted to use a 12 volt lithium battery and shelved the project because of battery price and really not needing the device at the time.
I have to build a chassis (out of something other than FG:) and I do have some small lead gel batteries. I will put a cheaper pre=filter over the HEPA. Even the N95’s with the relief valves were hard breathing when work got vigorous.
Time to get it off the shelf and into production? Lots of companies are looking for “critical need” work that’s exempted.
Right after 9/11 I went back to EMT school to replace my shipboard certificate (non ambulance) which had lapsed. I came up with the idea during the assisted respiration part of the class.
At that time they were teaching mouth to mouth and issued mouth to mouth masks. Masks had an attachment for adding an oxygen bag so you would be blowing in oxygen enriched air (it was still using your breath mixed with it). I combined two bags to the one mask, and attached to each other, which separated your breath to one bag which just acted as a breath power. The other bag was fed with oxygen and that was separate from your breath and went into the patient.
I envisioned it could have been used for mass casualties on scene where you had more patients that needed respirators than you had medics. Those breathing on their own would show bag movement, when they stopped it would be visible and a medic could attend.
It could be modified for in hospital use I suppose. A plain old CPAP machine with added O2 could be modified for in
hospital use. Or home
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