First, it's not the exact same systems and people; second, the circumstances are not analogous - a public health health emergency has a different set of considerations from a chronic junk problem; third, you have surely made some bad decisions in life as well as good ones, but you would probably be upset if people around you reacted to everything you did on the basis of your worst failure.

Sure, burning warehouses full of covid masks is absurdly wasteful. But do they really drop to zero effectiveness on their expiration date? Experience says no. If they're not fit to surgical standard, maybe they can be stamped with some identifying mark and redistributed as dust masks or something. The main reason the default option is to burn them is because history suggests that otherwise businesses will buy them and resell them as medical-grade or whatever without fully informing prospective customers.

Do you have a proposal for dealing with commercial mendacity that's less severe than just abolishing all state efforts at procurement or establishment of consumer standards?