Consider This from NPR - The Cost of COVID Safety Precautions Can Be A Big Burden For Some Families

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Masks and at-home COVID-19 test kits have become staples of pandemic life. The Biden Administration announced in January that it would distribute 400 million free N95 respirators to pharmacies and grocery stores around the country. The U.S. Postal Service has begun taking orders for free at-home test kits. Supply remains limited, so many are still purchasing masks and tests on their own, and the costs can easily add up.Wendy Edelberg is a Senior Fellow of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution who studies household spending and saving habits. She explains how time is one of the hidden costs associated with obtaining high-quality masks.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Throughout much of the pandemic, we've been told masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by reducing your chance of infection. That's CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in a video posted to Twitter last year. Wearing your mask is an important step you can take to keep us all healthy. With the highly contagious Omicron variant,

a lot of people want or need better protection than what a reusable cloth mask or disposable surgical mask can offer. My name is Jerry Dodge, just like the truck. Take Jerry Dodge. Before the pandemic, Dodge was a business consultant and retail worker. She retired early in 2020, not because she had been planning to, but because... One of my co-workers couldn't keep her mask on her face, and there were customers who weren't wearing masks, so I need to protect myself.

I have two risk factors, fairly severe health issues. Dodge has had to make room in her small budget for good masks. I am wearing double KN95s. I couldn't afford the N95s. So she scrimped elsewhere. I spend a lot of time just searching and searching and searching for food I can afford. I'm doing a lot less laundry. And she's still struggling to make ends meet. I did put off my electric bill, which is outrageous this time,

to purchase the KN95 mask. And I'm waiting for a shutoff notice before I can then get in touch with them and ask them to put me on a year-round budget. Consider this. Masks and at-home COVID test kits have become staples of pandemic life, offering added protection from the coronavirus. But that protection is also an added cost, a sometimes steep cost for people whose household budgets weren't that big to begin with. From NPR, I'm Ilsa Chang. It's Wednesday, February 2nd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. According to the CDC, the quote, highest level of protection comes from respirators that are approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. That includes N95 respirators. A box of 20 N95s on Amazon costs about $35. That's almost $2 per mask. KN95 masks are cheaper, ranging around a dollar each. But you know, it all adds up, especially when you're retired, like Jerry Dodges. I really am convinced that if I get COVID, it will take my life. So she's doing her best to make her box last. I can't afford to throw them away. I have a system for letting them sit for five days between uses. And pretty much you can tell

when they start to look worn, which is probably four to five uses. Five uses. That's the maximum number of times an N95 should be used based on CDC guidance. At that point, the elastic has likely stretched or become weaker, making the mask looser and less effective. The Biden administration announced in January that it would distribute 400 million free N95 respirators. And they're starting to be available for pickup at certain pharmacies and grocery stores around the country. Each person is allowed three. No ID, no insurance necessary. But when Jerry Dodge heard that, she thought, oh, well, thank you. And it won't last long, but I appreciate the effort.

Three free N95s won't last long in Takisha Moore's house either. We could go through a box of masks in four to five school days. Moore is a single mom to six children, one of whom has health issues that put him at higher risk during this pandemic. So I have three kids that are going to school physically right now. And then the two younger ones are virtual and homeschool. Moore runs a wholesale business from home. And with six mouths to feed, she just doesn't have a lot of room in her household budget. There's a little bit of wiggle room, but it's typically down to the dollar as far as groceries are concerned. If there isn't enough wiggle room, well, it goes on my card. So Moore has to make her dollar stretch, which means she can't afford the kinds of masks she'd prefer to

buy. We do have some N95 masks if needed, but those aren't cheap either. So we do typically go for whatever the best deal is, getting them in bulk, unfortunately. Not only does Moore worry about masks, she also has to worry about COVID tests. I was able to get the tests that we needed, but it cost me almost $300. Almost $300 for 10 rapid tests. I couldn't find enough tests looking everywhere. So it was just a matter of whatever the cost is, I'm just going to have to take that cost. And then I'll worry about it on the back end. Morris says whatever extra money she has goes to buying masks, sanitizer, and cleaning supplies. She no longer has a budget for things like entertainment and forget brand

name clothing. And she says things are only getting tighter. Now that we're in the pandemic, the cost of groceries are going up. You know, all of our utilities have gone up in the last couple of weeks. So I'm really having to pay attention and work my budget out regularly. The challenges that have been created by the pandemic are so many. We wanted to understand how these pandemic expenses for things like masks and tests are affecting households all over the country. So we reached out to Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. She studies household spending and saving decisions.

It's probably hard for her to quantify where the biggest source of stress is because there are so many sources of stress. I asked Edelberg what she thinks when she hears about people like Takisha Moore, who's accumulating credit card debt simply to buy masks, or Jerry Dodge, who isn't paying her heating bills, even though she lives in Michigan, where it's really cold. I think it's important to differentiate why we might worry about the aggregate economy and why it is completely appropriate for us to worry

about individual households who the help hasn't reached and probably came into the pandemic in a pretty precarious financial situation. So first thinking about in aggregate, in aggregate, household balance sheets are actually doing pretty well. Credit card debt is down. The amount of money that people have been able to sock away and save relative to what they were able to do before the pandemic is up. So if you look in aggregate and across like a bunch of different ways of, you know, thinking about groups of households, people look like they are doing better than before the pandemic. But there are some really important caveats there. One is that just because people are doing better than they were prior to the pandemic doesn't mean they're doing well. A lot of people came into the pandemic with really the midst of a pandemic is going to make their lives hard.

So it's not that I'm worried about the economy in aggregate. I'm worried about who the fiscal support didn't reach and I'm worried about who the labor market recovery is not reaching. Right. And as you mentioned, this extra spending, it isn't just financial, right? It's also spending in terms of time. People are spending hours sometimes searching for masks or waiting in lines for free test kits to bring home. Can you just walk us through how the cost of time plays out for families of different income levels here. Yeah. For people of a lot of financial means, if they want to, they can avoid this time tax. I mean, heck, you can pay to have somebody come to your home and administer a COVID test for you and give you the results of like a high quality

test within hours and not days. Yeah. But for somebody else who that would be a real financial reach, they may also not have the time to go wait in line for three hours in the cold with their children to get that test. And then on top of it, probably wait days for those test results. And so there are people who can avoid the time tax by spending a lot of money. There are people who maybe prefer to be spending their time doing something else, but at least have the time

to be able to comb through the neighborhood listservs to figure out which store just got masks. And then there are the people who have neither time nor money. And that's who we should worry about the most. Well, the Biden administration, of course, is sending some free tests to households, handing out a limited number of N95 masks at pharmacies. Let me ask you, are these government policies kind of just too little too late at this point to combat the debt that people are racking up purchasing these items on their own up until now. It is certainly a step in the right direction.

I am worried that it's too little too late for the people who have to work in face toface industries day in and day out. Those people need a steady supply of brand new, high-quality masks week in and week out. So getting a couple of masks, that's a good thing, but that doesn't meet them where their lives are. And similarly, getting four tests in the mail from, you know, if you sign up with the post office, that's obviously a good thing. But that's not nearly enough for the person who is, let's say, an elementary school teacher who doesn't have access to, you know, tests on her own. Or Takesha Moore's family, which has six children. Oh, my gosh. And, you know, tests on her own. Or Takesha Moore's family, which has six children. Oh my gosh. And, you know, and then the schools say you need to have a negative test or you should be testing

regularly. And I think our recovery will continue to muddle along in aggregate, even if households have to expend $25 a week that they would much prefer to be spending on something else or that they have to dip into their savings or borrow on their credit cards, it's a problem. It's a headwind. It's bad, but it's not going to derail our recovery. Well, what kind of government policies would you like to see at this point during the pandemic to help families who are spending the money and the time to get things like masks or home testing kits? I think it's similar to the arc of being able to get vaccinated. It is much easier to get vaccinated now than it was in the first couple of months when vaccines were first rolled out.

I mean, people were waiting outside grocery stores for them to open to be able to get in line to get that first vaccination. And that was a policy failure. It was frustrating that there were millions of Americans who desperately wanted to get vaccinated and couldn't. So now we, for the most part, figured out how to make vaccines available to whoever wants them. It took us, as a country, a frustrating long time to work that out. My guess is that policymakers are working really hard

on the testing and the mask availability problem, and they will work through that. And in some months, we will also be able to get tests as we want them and masks will be more available. But this was a somewhat predictable problem. I guess I'm still baffled at why it seems the administration figured out access to vaccines faster than they figured out access to masking and testing, which you would have thought would have happened way earlier than access to vaccines. I think policymakers were laser focused on getting access to vaccines solved.

And I think it's just hard to be laser focused on more than one thing. So they were focused on getting access to vaccines and I think dropped the ball on making sure that we had easy access to masks and tests. And they're now trying to play catch up. Exactly. That is Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies

at the Brookings Institution. Thank you very much for joining us. You are very welcome. Good to talk to you. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.