Some Miscellaneous Tab-Clearing

First, a few points:
I told you if you were worried about coronavirus, that N95 masks would be a good idea.
Turns out I nailed that, a couple of weeks before TPTB caught up to me.
I told you a substantial portion of US medical supplies come from China.
A week later, the CDC noted that supplies that won't be forthcoming from China could be a real problem.
I told you in 0.2 seconds that keeping 3000 people on a Plague Ship was world-class dumbassery.
A week later, with infections on the MV Death Princess proceeding at just about the exact nominal rate I suggested, TPTB suddenly reversed course, pulled their heads out of a tight dark place, and got right on that, by bringing everyone home.

Look guys, really, I am that smart a lot of times, particularly with home court advantage on subject matter, but let's get serious: I apply common sense and simple analytics (and you can too), whereas TPTB are hampered by the fact that most of the HMFICs are incompetent jackasses with middling 2-digit IQs and festeringly inflated senses of their own intelligence.
Forrest Gump is smarter than they are too. There's not much trick to this.

And if TPTB are running you back and forth like sheep, and spreading recockulous propaganda that shouldn't fool a child or a half-wit, it's to keep you off balance, panicked, and too busy to take a minute to think about things. You can learn not to do this, or you can live a short but interesting life.
As dinner for something higher on the food chain.
_________

Next, there's been a good bit of back and forth in comments about cobbling together your own homebrew protective masks.

Let me be as subtle as a train wreck about that idea:
It's about like asking if you could solve your water supply problems by flying C-130s to Alaska, and bringing back snow to melt down.
Yes, you could do that, but if you had those resources, why in hell would you want to???

So yes, there's probably some way you could make a substitute filtration mask.
But if you could, why wouldn't just have done that from the get-go?
Because it would cost you $50-$500 a mask.
At which price point, you could be buying N100 powered NBC/CBRN respirators, and Level A Encapsulating Suits, and building your house to BL-IV laboratory spec.
And if you made a homebrew mask you'd need 3M lab space to verify that it worked.
And if you had a 3M science lab, you'd just stay inside, and skip having the mask.
And if you didn't have a 3M quality test lab, you'd be walking into a contagion plague with untested equipment, hoping it would work, and you wouldn't know if it failed until it was way too late.

Show of hands: how many of you would build or buy a "bulletproof" vest on that basis...?
Untested. It might fail. But if it did, you'd know right after the bullet entered your chest.
So, I've got those vests right now, for sale...any takers??
Beuller? Bueller...?? Ferris Bueller...??? Anyone? Anyone???