Coronavirus: Japan PM gets social media roasting for offering free cloth masks
- After news of the offer, some Twitter users posted doctored photographs of Abe wearing two masks, one over his mouth and another over his eyes
- The programme, which is estimated to cost about US$372 million before shipping, has been derided online as a waste of money
Within hours of the announcement, the hashtag “Abenomasks”, a play on the prime minister’s signature “Abenomics” economic policy, was trending on Japanese Twitter.
The prime minister launched his offer to send cloth masks out while wearing one at a meeting of a government task force late on Wednesday. The masks will be sent to each of Japan’s more than 50 million households starting the week after next, with areas seeing a spike in cases getting priority.
“I am wearing one too, but these cloth masks are not disposable,” Abe said. “You can use soap to wash and reuse them, so this should be a good response to the sudden, huge demand for masks,” he said, noting domestic production of disposable masks would likely rise to 700 million in April from 600 million last month.
