I just had a double whammy of news input. First was a local news brat whining about the lack of surgical masks and how the State of Florida asked for them to the Feds and have not arrived. I cut it right before the Orange Man Bad section of his mini rant. Then I went to see how things were doing in Spain (I got kin there) and I get to read about this town with an assisted living facility where 34 of its 120 elderly had tested positive for the Chinese flu and 15 have died in a very short time.  The director of the place has many complains but one among them is the lack surgical masks, He requested 600 over a week ago and  he has been ignored by the local government who has been threatening of removing him for going to the press. Not for nothing, but the local Gov is from the PSOE party and as good socialists, they hate bad press and know it is cheaper to get rid of the troublesome director than actually provide help.

Here is my thing: What was being used prior to disposable surgical masks? Cloth surgical masks!

The advantage of disposal mask is that you do not need the laundry infrastructure and procedures that can be a money drain to a hospital in a yearly basis. But I reckon we are kinda in an emergency situation  and a little outside-the-box thinking is needed.

For the life of me I can’t understand why do local governments don’t go to clothing factories or even go to Walmart or JoAnn Fabric and get fabric, supplies and hire every grandma, mom and seamstress or tailors in the county to produce  what amounts to a rectangular piece of cloth with two long strips per side. Give them the specs, pay them the gorramed $150 for producing “x” amount of masks a day and let capitalism take over.

Now, you can dispose of the cloth mask or you can get the National Guard to collect the used mask properly placed on bio-hazard bags, take them to  industrial laundromats or hotels with their own industrial laundry facilities. They can then use the washers with the proper amount of bleach to kill the virus (I just found out water temperature hot enough to disinfect is not used in the machines) or have vats with boiling water to make sure everything gets killed. Once washed, up they go into the dryers and then pack them and redistribute. I know this is somewhat cumbersome but basically because I bet that no hospital has a laundry facility anymore.

And my brain just popped the notion that industrial autoclaves could also be used if there is a non-food manufacturing facility that uses them.  The thing is, we either improvise and learn from this virus shit or we are condemned to repeat the mistakes in the future. We ignored the warnings of the many Cassandras that said we should not depend on China for our basic needs and we are now paying for it.