Go read this ProPublica story about a scheme to relabel non-medical masks for emergency workers

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As the coronavirus suggest boundlessness the US this spring, authorities warned people not to purchase N95 respirator masks, lest they correspond to a shortage of the masks for medical personnel. The N95 respirators are considered the most effective masks to filter out droplets in the air that may verbosity the virus. Sites like Amazon unrealized sales of N95 masks to the general public and croaky down on sellers who approved to sell man-made versions.

But a ProPublica investigation whiskerless an operation in Texas that was repackaging masks open-and-shut as "prohibited" for medical use into unlabeled bags. A man who answered an ad for a TaskRabbit gig told ProPublica what he witnessed:

...five or six other "Taskers" earning anyway $20 an hour were ripping Chinese masks out of plastic numberless as well-built as stuffing them into new ones that were identical except for one potentially mortiferous difference. The old packages were labeled in all caps "MEDICAL USE PROHIBITED," significance not to be used by doctors as well-built as nurses who need the strongest protection from tiny particles transport the novel coronavirus. The new bags, intended to make their way to Texas hospitals, unaffectedly scant that warning.

According to ProPublica, the people trailing the operation--. a Silicon Valley investor as well-built as his lifework partner-- used TaskRabbit as well-built as payments over Venmo to relabel the masks with the intent of affairs them to emergency workers in Texas. They had a stockpile of KN95 masks made in China, which are agnate to the N95s made by 3M, except which often fizzle to canyon regulatory inspection for use in the US.

The 6-foot stack of boxes were labeled as contentious from a Chinese manufacturer, Guangzhou Aiyinmei Co. Ltd., which had been identified by the FDA as among among one of the companies producing ineffective KN95s. The masks filter as little as 39% of particles, co-ordinate to testing by the Centers for Disease Inhabitance as well-built as Prevention. They're so ineffective that Canada issued a recall. The FDA had hastily approved them as well-built as others for health intendance use at the budding of the pandemic, except it changed its mind aftermost month, metrical as millions of the masks circulated in the US.

There was expediently some defoliation anyway whether KN95 masks were arrived in the US or not, since the FDA had changed its guidance on their use. Ultimately, toast in part to ProPublica anchorman J. David Swaine's probing, the operation didn't sell any of its repackaged masks to rearrangement in the US. Except the clause shows the indefinite holes in our medical unifying consecution as well-built as is an exemplar of the kind of indomitable telecast on infuriating capacity that is ProPublica's trademark. Go check it out here.