https://www.wired.com/story/amid-coronavirus-fears-a-mask-shortage-could-spread-globally/

It’s been less than two weeks since the Chinese government quarantined 35 million people in the city of Wuhan and surrounding regions to control the fast-spreading coronavirus, but the images coming from there already have a grim familiarity: empty shops and streets, long queues at hospitals, and on every face, a surgical mask covering everything below the eyes.

The masks’ ubiquity is a signal of people’s panic over the disease, and also of official actions to control the outbreak. Wuhan and several other jurisdictions are now requiring they be worn in public, and footage originally posted to the Chinese social network Weibo shows police officers using drones with loudspeakers to scold people who venture out without one.