Assuming purchase prices of two to five euros each, it would cost around 166 to 415 million euros to procure an FFP2 mask for every person in Germany per week.
According to the Institute for Labor Market Research, however, every additional week in lockdown costs the economy around 3.5 billion euros.
In the event of a disaster, it would now seem natural that the state should make every effort to distribute the highly protective masks widely among the population - politicians have been demanding this for months, and the chairman of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, made this proposal last April.
The new strategy of the Federal Ministry of Health, on the other hand, provides for citizens of 60 and over and those with special pre-existing illnesses to be given FFP2 masks in pharmacies - after they have received a voucher from the Federal Printing Office in the mail, which in turn first has to be delivered to the health insurance companies.