DISGUSTING ploy to rip you off with DIRTY medical waste!
If you ask me, it’s one of the WORST aspects of any crisis.
Whether it’s a natural disaster… a terrorist attack… or a global pandemic like COVID-19…
The event itself is BAD enough.
But we’ve seen in the past how time and again, it can set off a ripple effect of events that take an even BIGGER toll…
Especially when some “bad actors” step in to take advantage of folks in a VULNERABLE position.
At the beginning of the health crisis we’re currently in, we were worried about price gouging… fake PPE… and even vaccine scams.
But now, there’s another EMERGING threat – and it’s one even I didn’t see coming.
It’s been called by one expert a “dark, dark underground… where fear meets greed.”
Here’s why you STILL need to be on HIGH ALERT… even as this pandemic appears to be waning.
CASHING IN on fear
For some of us, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call about the quality of our own hygiene.
After all, we made it through last winter without catching a cold or the flu… even when we DIDN’T lock ourselves away for months at a time!
Some of that likely had to do with becoming more DILIGENT about hand-washing and keeping our filthy hands away from our faces – two habits we should’ve had anyway, pandemic or no pandemic.
To keep our hands clean and ourselves infection-free, some of us came to rely upon wearing those blue rubber gloves… a.k.a. nitrile gloves.
I stuffed a few of them in a pocket of my purse “just in case”… and, in the beginning at least, I’d wear them when pumping gas. I never liked touching the pump with my bare hands anyway.
Demand for these medical-grade gloves of course SURGED during the pandemic…
And according to a shocking new exposé… the SCAMS followed closely behind.
Turns out, there’s an international operation to resell USED gloves – a.k.a. medical waste – to unsuspecting consumers!
We’re not talking just a few slipping in with the regular supply. TENS OF MILLIONS of soiled gloves are being shipped out from factories in Asia to the U.S.
One expert calls it “an endless stream of filthy, second-hand and substandard gloves” on an “enormous scale.”
The new report states that some of the gloves have been washed… and even dyed blue… before being repackaged…
While other have VISIBLE signs of blood stains and other contamination.
The problem is that the VAST majority of these gloves are imported from Asia…
And at the beginning of the pandemic, the feds SUSPENDED import regulations on PPE in order to get the medical supplies to where they were needed faster and with less bureaucracy.
You might THINK that buying nitrile gloves through MAINSTREAM online outlets like Amazon would be SAFE…
But that’s one of the ways these scammers are CASHING IN!
Remember that ANYONE can sell pretty much ANYTHING on Amazon. Jeff Bezos isn’t checking to make sure those medical supplies are sterile – not while he’s on his way to SPACE!
If you MUST purchase nitrile gloves or any other PPE online, look for the phrase “Sold by” on the product page. If you don’t recognize the vendor… or the package is being shipped directly from China, Thailand, or another Asian country… you might want to choose another option.
You might have better luck getting nitrile gloves in store at a national pharmacy chain or big box store like Walmart or Target, where they’ve passed through multiple checkpoints before hitting store shelves.
If you do receive a shipment from an unfamiliar source, inspect the contents before using them – or even TOUCHING them with your bare hands. Look for stains… ink markings… and even holes.
The good news is that you may not need nitrile gloves at all. If you’re not a caretaker for someone who’s sick… or not in contact with someone else’s bodily fluids… you probably don’t need medical-grade protection.
I suspect the high demand for this type of PPE during the height of the pandemic was more about peace of mind than actual infection protection…
Especially considering that surface transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is very rare and the risk is low, according to the CDC and a number of studies.
I know we all want to get back to “normal” as quickly as possible – but this latest news is an indication that we’ve got to remain VIGILANT for the timebeing.
