STREET VENDORS in Dublin are taking advantage of growing coronavirus fears by selling face masks on the streets to passersby.
Today the government announced that a €3 billion emergency fund will be spent tackling the outbreak, while on Monday, St. Patrick's Day parades around the country were cancelled in a bid to slow the spread of the Covid-19.
Public concern about the virus is arguably at an all-time high, particularly with videos and photos going viral of shops running out of basic amenities like toilet paper as 'panic-buyers' prepare for the apocalypse.
Ever the savvy-type, street sellers in Dublin have cottoned on to this and have embraced their entrepreneurial spirit by selling face masks - which have expectedly flown off the shelves - and in one particularly sinister case, the corridors of a Dublin hospital - taking full advantage of peoples' desperation to cosplay as a germaphobic Bane.
Legal academic Paul O’Connell spotted one of the vendors on Dublin’s Henry Street on Monday and took to Twitter to applaud the woman's moxie.
He posted a video with the caption: "When I was younger I’d sometimes sell Christmas decorations up around Henry Street and Moore Street - good to see the Dublin street traders not missing a trick on the #COVID2019 hysteria"
In the footage, the woman can be heard telling passersby: "Three euro, two for a fiver - face masks."
Not a bad deal to breathe my own recirculated air for hours on end.
In China, citizens have taken desperate/hilarious measures to tackle their own face mask shortage, wearing everything from D-cup bras to empty water dispensers on their heads to keep the deadly virus out.
Hopefully it'll be a while before we need get to that stage, providing the great street sellers of Ireland have got enough stock.
