Brickbat: Hoarders

The Transportation Security Administration sat on more than 1.3 million N95 masks it did not need even as hospitals and the Department of Veterans Affairs were begging for them. TSA does not mandate that its screeners to wear the N95 masks, which require training and fitting to use. Instead, TSA employees typically use surgical masks, and some agency officials in April began to suggest they send the masks to places that could use them. In fact, that was the direction give to the agency by higher-ups in the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the agency stockpiled many of the masks in a warehouse and sent the rest to airports, where very few people were flying.