Need masks or sanitizer? No, we don't, either

We seem to have enough now. More than enough.

At the beginning of the pandemic, there were acute shortages of PPE and TP as consumers scrambled to stock up (or hoard).

To meet demand, companies here in the Twin Cities and across the globe that had been making clothing and booze pivoted to sewing masks and mixing barrels of hand sanitizer. But sales of pandemic protection consumables have plummeted in recent months as vaccination rates have gone up and COVID restrictions have eased.

Now you can't give sanitizer away.

"It was like right off the cliff," said Bartley Blume, owner of Bent Brewstillery, of the drop in demand.

When the pandemic started, the Roseville beer and spirits maker started churning out hand sanitizer using a World Health Organization recipe.

"We purchased tankers of ethanol," Blume said, as well as barrels of hydrogen peroxide and glycerin, to produce 65,000 to 70,000 gallons of hand sanitizer. But when demand dropped last summer, Blume was left with about 10,000 gallons that no one seems to want, even for free.

"Nobody's interested anymore," Blume said. "I have no idea what to do with the rest of it."

It's the same story at Tattersall Distilling, which is stuck with "quite a few pallets" of the surplus hand sanitizer, said Jon Kreidler, co-founder of the Minneapolis company. "There is essentially no excess demand for hand sanitizer anymore."

There's been a similar drop in mask demand, said Reid Lutter, CEO of St. Paul clothing manufacturer Podiumwear.

Lutter said shifting from athletic clothing to masks saved his company's bottom line in 2020. Masks were his biggest selling item last year. But demand dropped in half in February and there are even fewer buyers today.

Even toilet paper sales have slowed — to below pre-pandemic levels, according to a Wall Street Journal article headlined, "Americans Have Too Much Toilet Paper."

If you're like us, you have wads of unused masks in drawers, coat pockets and glove boxes, bottles of hand sanitizer at the bottom of purses and backpacks, and maybe even some jumbo commercial-sized toilet paper rolls, a panic purchase stuffed into a closet that you'll never use because they're too big to fit on your toilet paper holder.

Is it time to get rid of the pandemic surplus?

Dr. Gregory Poland, a Mayo Clinic physician and professor specializing in infectious diseases and vaccines, would say no.

"This is a very dynamic and changing situation," he said, noting that the highly contagious delta variant is spreading and the World Health Organization recently urged continued wearing of masks even if you're vaccinated.

Poland said he plans to wear a mask in crowded indoor places, in areas where vaccination rates are low, on international travel or with family members who are not vaccinated.

Even after the pandemic is over, some health care experts advocate that we should continue to wear a mask when we're sick to avoid spreading more ordinary viruses.

"I would say there is no need to hoard toilet paper, but hang onto your masks and hand sanitizer," Poland said.

Richard Chin • 612-673-1775