Latest update in a long line of amusing oddities from good old, reliable Belgium.
Last june, the government provided a mask for each citizen. Free of charge, obviously. You just had to go to you local pharmacy to get one (or more). I'd say that's a nice gesture.
At the time however, there was already some criticism because it looked like a shady deal. It cost a few dozen million, but the supplier of the masks was some unknown foreign company with no expertise whatsoever.
Rumor had it, local companies could not bid on the contract: they could not enter their bid in time, since the contract with that random company had already been signed before the tender had been released. And there's definitely some truth to that rumour, seeing how I personally know someone who works for a company specialised in breathing protection & other types of PPE. His company would have entered a proposal (for a much lower budget even) for which my friend would have been responsible, but they couldn't.
All because of the excuse that things had to happen "quickly". Yep, quickly, as in more than 3 months after the start of this thing.
Cut to 8 months later.
Our government, who provided us with these masks, now urges people NOT to wear them. They have already been banned in numerous places by now as well.
Because, you know, we're not convinced that the material that was used to make them is safe. These maske might actually be dangerous, we're not sure. We'll look into that. Yes, you read that correctly, we'll look into that after providing them to people. Because quality control beforehand is just such a silly notion.
Ffs, if I something like this happened on a tv show, I'd criticize it for being way too far fetched.