I'm also under suspicion that a lot of people are using the climate to use POs for their labs and unis and then just flipping them on amazon or ebay for exorbitant prices, which is just exacerbating the situation. I'm kind of lucky in that I've got a shitty respirator that kind of fits and like 3 boxes of surgical masks left over. I can't even imagine what its like in India and other countries where supplies are tight. I'm also lucky that my research protocols aren't yet optimized so I can afford to wait a little bit. But once they are actually optimized, I have to get on trucking and I need PPE. I'm just going to devote my budget for the next two weeks for PPE so I can at least reserve some stuff before everything disappears again. The glove situation is also worrying, I haven't yet checked my nitrile supply. I might just have to stock up there too.
And 3M is the best. I considered using Honeywell, but even they're out of everything.