A brief comment regarding masks. For folks working close to the public such as cashiers I do not view it as being selfish to wear a mask. Of those individuals I know who are wearing masks a substantial number have chronic health conditions.
Beyond that at my own job here in New Jersey all those who do use masks have a bare handful that are being reused after an effort to clean them with alcohol or some other antiseptic.
There is no hording of these things. They do not seem to be available to hord.
The main arguement for their use by the folk employed maintaining "essential services" is to prevent the spread of this virus to our customers. One unknowingly ill worker could become what the epidemiologists call a super spreader. That is a status I fervently wish to avoid.
I can guarantee you that china fabricated (and grossly underreported) their number of cases and deaths. A study out of Sweden was able to map much of the early part of the outbreak (prior to the "change in how reporting was done") to a quadratic curve with a 0.99 correlation coefficient.
1. Disease infections follow an exponential curve, not a quadratic curve. 2. How TF can a correlation coefficient be 0.99? Population counting is a highly irregular game.
Here's something I heard from my dad. A certain guy (I forget his name) is a good guy, good student at my dad's school. The work and socialization was good for his health, turns out it was needed. When the school was shut down, soon after the guy had heart failure and died. I think it might have something to do with the connection between psychology stuff and physical health.
