The masks thing is not about a power asymmetry, it's about extended use protocols. There is a critical shortage of equipment, and the hospital has to make it last.

Now why hospitals are demanding that doctors keep quiet about the consequences of emergency operations under extended use protocols? That's an entirely separate issue. Those hospitals should be named and shamed.

But I completely understand restricting PPE to needed areas. The solution to that is to manufacture more PPE. But if we're not going to do that then extended use protocols are just military sense.