This just don't smell right...
Quote:
Union Locates 39 Million N95 Masks for Healthcare Workers, Local Governments
By Bay City News • Published March 26, 2020 • Updated on March 26, 2020 at 11:09 am
Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers West announced Thursday that it located 39 million N95 masks and will make them available to state and local governments and health care systems that are fighting the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The union found a distributor with the masks, which are cleared for surgical use, after pleas from health care workers as new coronavirus cases surge across the state and the country as a whole.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/coro...ments/2262072/
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Congratulations to the union for the effort,, I think
To the distributor: What in hell are you doing??
My civilian background: I had a 30yr career in designing inventory control, accounts receivable/billable/ledger, product distribution pipeline and marketing.
The problem:
Every medical physicality, medical products supplier and manufactor in the USA (nee the world) is desperate for masks.
There is a distributor sitting on 35,000,000 masks.
N95 info:
N95 mask retail for about 7.00usd and wholesale for 1.50usd.
This distributor was sitting on 52 to 245 MILLION DOLLARS of inventory.
Phytcily this represents a BUNCH of space. 3M bulk ships the N95 in pallets, 40 boxes of 160 each. This converts to 54,687 pallets and represents approx 120,000 sq ft of warehousing, stacked three high in shelving units. Most of the US warehousing buildings run from 10K to 100K SQ FT for bulk pallet storage.
3M has only 18 authorized distributors. (c attach PDF file)
The Stink:
This smells of hoarding and price gouging on a very large scale.
For each dollar of price increase, the distributor pockets 35,000,000USD.
The inference that someone FOUND the masks is ludicrous.
I also looked at something that could gauge usage of masks, It's not possible to be very accurate, as there are just too many variables. But based only on the number of ICU beds(approx 95,000) in the USA this hoard represents about 120 days supply @ 3 per shift. In reality probably more like 60days.
link: SCCM Critical Care Statistics