I sent some N95 masks to relatives. One of whom was a nurse during both the SARS1 and MERS thing and that was her specialty. She was very happy to have a “real” mask.
At the beginning of the outbreak covid was scaring the medical types for good reason. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that we know it isn’t nearly as lethal as its two cousins.
China in January 2020 was welding people inside their apartment buildings. Steve Bannon has close ties to anti regime Chinese who were sending him videos of what was going on in Wuhan. The streets were almost empty. An occasional pedestrian would be seen, staggering and then collapsing. It wasn’t staged, the gov’t wasn’t sharing these videos.