If so, is there something the "outsiders" are missing (e.g. some political bs between the two countries) ? Or is it just plain old theft ?

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-czech-...

Czech authorities during a customs raid last Tuesday mistakenly seized 101,600 facemasks gifted by a branch of the Red Cross in eastern China to a Chinese community in Italy. Although Czech officials apologized for the mix-up, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Sunday published a bogus article claiming the Czech state had “stolen” that shipment – and much more.

Czechs would send 110,000 facemasks to Italy on Monday (March 23), dispatched along with an evacuation bus of 43 Italian nationals heading home, as agreed with the Italian Embassy in Prague.

--- My comment is that our goverment officials or those policemans are probably stupid...

Or they thought "better safe than sorry", given that smugglers aren't stupid and you can't just believe it was sent by Red Cross just because the courier says so.

If anything, I'd ask why La Repubblica published a bogus article.

Seasons come and go, but click bait is eternal

The masks were sent to Italy within a few days.

Agree it sounded confrontational, but it probably wasn't.

The government even made an exception so the sewing supplies shops could open.

[1]: https://www.fler.cz/zbozi/oboustranna-rouska-11339514

Sometimes, quite stylishly: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/president-slovakia-coronaviru...

But of course, you may not know that you're sick... so wear a mask.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

By using even a very rudimentary mask, the infected droplets have it much harder to get out to other people and to contaminate surfaces. Also you are less likely to touch your face, so less hand contamination & thus less surface contamination.

Of course this only works if everyone has a mask, but given how easy it is to make simple cloth masks I think this is a fully reasonable requirement.

I'd be surprised if that worked at all. At least one Chinese ecommerce website is preventing foreign IPs from even viewing item listings for masks. When you try to view the item from the search results, it gives you an error saying something like export is prohibited.

Also China has pretty much shut down air travel to the country to prevent "imported cases," so air freight capacity from is greatly reduced: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/world/asia/china-virus-tr...:

> The halt to almost all international passenger flights in and out of China will make it even harder for other countries to import N95 respirators, disposable surgical masks and other personal protection gear from China for their own doctors and nurses. About half the world’s airfreight typically moves in the bellies of passenger aircraft, while the rest travels aboard air freighters.

> Previous, large-scale cancellations of passenger air services to China have already created an acute shortage of air cargo capacity over the past two weeks.

Turns out we can just keep those passenger aircraft flying.

https://www.wired.com/story/airlines-use-empty-passenger-jet...

> But Monday afternoon, Delta said it’s putting an unspecified number of passenger jets back in the air, flying out of 13 American airports and to 70 destinations overseas. Delta’s not selling any tickets for those planes, however. Rather, they’ll be operated by Delta’s cargo arm, running charter flights to cater to anyone who needs to move a package or pallet.