I don't live in a huge metro area, relatively speaking, but it is our state capital city, and home to a large state university medical school and hospital with some 10,000 employees, where my wife works. So I've got a couple of perspectives to provide. #1 - My wife sits on briefings every morning with her faculty and staff and today they were told they have three days worth of surgical masks remaining with some ridiculous number on order but no ETA due to these things being purchased out from under them by private companies, who then turn around and negotiate a price to sell them back to the public hospitals, who were outbid initially. #2 - Her department chair - a good friend of mine - who is a very established and well-respected cardiac physician in his late sixties, who should be cruising out to research and retirement, is on a [brutal] rotating schedule of intubation duty i.e. administering breathing tubes for those who become critical. I have a dozen more anecdotes from the past few weeks I could share but the moral of this story is that, before we blanket situations with armchair quarterback generalities, and accuse medical professionals and scientists of "guessing," we might want to educate ourselves by actually talking to the folks on the front lines and try give them what support we can....even if that is no more than erring on the side of caution.