I'm one of those people that believe the professionals when they say that these masks don't protect you from the Corvid virus anyway, but over here in Thailand almost everyone seems to believe that this mouth protector is definitely what is going to save them from the plague.
Whether you believe the mask works or not is immaterial though when we start talking about people who have no regard for their fellow man and do something like this.=:
In Saraburi province, an area North-East of Bangkok, police raided a shop to discover that the workers inside were ironing used masks and then passing them off as new in provided packaging. This was discovered in a recycling factory that recycles all manner of things and there is no information about how the police were alerted to the operation.
Thousands of used masks were discovered on site, and the workers were being paid 1 baht per mask to make them appear to be new. This is a new form of low in my mind because even though I don't believe that the masks can actually protect you from airborne illness I think that if you were to put a used mask on that was previously worn by someone with an ailment of some sort, that would be a sure-fire method of getting sick.
Of course the heat from the iron could possibly kill whatever pathogen exists on the mask but I don't know about this, I'm not a scientist or even particularly smart in a general sense.
I do know when i see a complete disregard for humanity though, and this is a good example of exactly that. The workers claim to have no idea where the masks came from but it appears as though someone had collected them for precisely this purpose.
There are some terrible people out there and while the workers are very poor people and were only making about $10 a day to perform this procedure, I don't see how they can sleep at night knowing what they are potentially doing to their own community and possibly their own friends and family.