今年春天，冠状病毒在美国蔓延，当局警告人们不要购买N95口罩，以免造成医护人员口罩的短缺。N95口罩被认为是过滤空气中可能传播病毒的飞沫最有效的口罩。亚马逊（Amazon）等网站暂停向公众销售N95口罩，并打击试图销售假冒版本的卖家。

但ProPublica的一项调查发现，德克萨斯州的一项行动是将标有“禁止”的医用口罩重新包装到未贴标签的袋子里。一个接了TaskRabbit演唱会广告的人告诉ProPublica他亲眼所见：

...five or six other “Taskers” earning about $20 an hour were ripping Chinese masks out of plastic bags and stuffing them into new ones that were identical but for one potentially deadly difference. The old packages were labeled in all caps “MEDICAL USE PROHIBITED,” meaning not to be used by doctors and nurses who need the strongest protection from tiny particles carrying the novel coronavirus. The new bags, intended to make their way to Texas hospitals, simply omitted that warning.

据ProPublica称，这项行动的幕后黑手——一位硅谷投资者和他的商业伙伴——利用TaskRabbit和Venmo支付的款项重新为面具贴上标签，目的是把面具卖给德克萨斯州的急救人员。他们拥有中国**的KN95口罩库存，这些口罩与3M公司生产的N95口罩相似，但在美国使用时往往无法通过监管机构的检查。

The 6-foot stack of boxes were labeled as coming from a Chinese manufacturer, Guangzhou Aiyinmei Co. Ltd., which had been identified by the FDA as one of the companies producing ineffective KN95s. The masks filter as little as 39% of particles, according to testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They’re so ineffective that Canada issued a recall. The FDA had hastily approved them and others for health care use at the beginning of the pandemic, but it changed its mind last month, even as milli*** of the masks circulated in the US.

由于FDA改变了对KN95口罩的使用指导，关于KN95口罩在美国是否被允许的问题显然有些混乱。最终，部分由于ProPublica记者J.David Swaine的调查，该公司没有向美国客户销售任何重新包装的口罩。但这篇文章显示了我们的医疗供应链中存在的巨大漏洞，是一个典型的例子，说明了对恼人话题的固执报道是ProPublica的商标。去这里看看。