GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization • Hacker News Board

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#41

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #35

This is definitely great and uplifting news but I am not sure why GM or Ford is the one on top of list for this endeavor? There are a bunch of second source assembly houses that build medical equipment for the big players. Seems like it would make more sense for them to build it with some sort of FDA fast pass. Discretion, I work for a carmaker company but my opinion is of my own only.

> why GM or Ford is the one on top of list for this endeavor?

Ford and GM were massive manufacturers when WWII reared its head. That gives them a rich history of wartime production [1].

The principal cost in these sorts of shifts can be bureaucratic. Having cultural capital to call on is invaluable.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_U...

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#42

Post by lightgreen » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #33

lightgreen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk does not owe people anything. If he decides to produce them, that's fine, but he doesn't have to. But the governments should buy these ventilators from private companies, so private companies like Tesla or GM were incentivized to produce these ventilators. Edit: added and then removed a comment about downvotes

> if you decided to downvote, please at least explain why. Because I don't believe lefts conquered the HN. I downvoted because you assumed it was the “lefts” who were downvoting you.

Well, at least thank you for the explanation!

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#43

Post by asdfman123 » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #5

asdfman123 wrote: post #2

If we were halfway rational, we would have started this in January. Failing that, start now.

This is pure hindsight. This didn't warrant that kind of response in January, not by a longshot. In January it looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years. We can't shut down industry and retool factories just in case.

It's pure understanding of middle school math and exponential growth.

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#44

Post by bilbo0s » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #10

asdfman123 wrote: post #2

If we were halfway rational, we would have started this in January. Failing that, start now.

To be fair, if we had started back then there is almost zero chance that we'd need to pull in additional factories like this. Although arguably there might not be much need now either. The companies that make these have said that production can be increased.

In fairness, this is a discussion of hypotheticals at this point. We're likely to need the ventilators. Other nations are likely to need the ventilators. We have to get as many companies as is reasonable making them to meet the need.

Detroit certainly has the engineering and manufacturing expertise to retool in a hurry. It's the sort of thing they do a lot of, so that sounds like a reasonable place to look for additional capacity.

As for the rest of the discussion? I mean, yeah, I suppose if Lincoln had not been shot, we might have never needed Martin Luther King. But, Lincoln was killed. So we did get MLK. Which is fine, no real reason to harp on how dumb it was to kill Lincoln.

Should've, would've, could've is less than useful when you're still at "need to". Save the shoulda woulda coulda for the post-mortem.

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#45

Post by danenania » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #21

caymanjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure hindsight. This didn't warrant that kind of response in January, not by a longshot. In January it looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years. We can't shut down industry and retool factories just in case.

Tell that to South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan who mobilized immediately (South Korea had their first case on the same day we did, Jan 8) Also, for H1N1 (which ended up being much less deadly) Obama had a million tests made in the first 2 weeks from the first US case. We're now 2 months from the first US case with less than 20k tests done.

Amazing. It shows us that the power law is at work in government effectiveness.

A capable executive branch can get orders of magnitude more accomplished in a given timeframe than an inept one.

It’s likely that thousands will die who didn’t have to because many American voters forgot the importance of a baseline level of administrative competence. Hopefully this will remind them.

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#46

Post by Smoosh » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #15

caymanjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure hindsight. This didn't warrant that kind of response in January, not by a longshot. In January it looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years. We can't shut down industry and retool factories just in case.

the correct response should look like an overreaction in hindsight. But it's tough to explain the cost of the overreaction if said overreaction prevented all of these problems. I make the analogy with an engineer receiving accolades for fixing bugs and outages with heroic effort. But the engineer that creates trouble free code, that never has any problems, but takes a long time to create code that's bug free seems to…

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#47

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #21

caymanjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure hindsight. This didn't warrant that kind of response in January, not by a longshot. In January it looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years. We can't shut down industry and retool factories just in case.

Tell that to South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan who mobilized immediately (South Korea had their first case on the same day we did, Jan 8) Also, for H1N1 (which ended up being much less deadly) Obama had a million tests made in the first 2 weeks from the first US case. We're now 2 months from the first US case with less than 20k tests done.

But did South Korea or Taiwan start cranking out ventilators?

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#48

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #5

asdfman123 wrote: post #2

If we were halfway rational, we would have started this in January. Failing that, start now.

This is pure hindsight. This didn't warrant that kind of response in January, not by a longshot. In January it looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years. We can't shut down industry and retool factories just in case.

We didn’t know this virus was going to be this bad, but we knew that we were overdue for one and there had been recent epidemics that targeted respiratory systems. Our respirator stockpile was in the tens of thousands—several orders of magnitude lower than would be necessary in a national emergency.

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#49

Post by non-entity » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

This is something I've been hoping to see since the pandemic started.

But, I'm pretty ignorant regarding this industry and I've also wondered this:

There are numerous manufacturing plants within the US, but how easy is it switch from manufacturing knew product to another? Is the equipment and machine used generally the same?

Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization

#50

Post by fma » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #11

caymanjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure hindsight. This didn't warrant that kind of response in January, not by a longshot. In January it looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years. We can't shut down industry and retool factories just in case.

Not sure if you recall, but in January China put large portions of the country under lockdown in a quarantine effort of unprecedented scale. At that point, the writing was on the wall that this was not something that "looked exactly like the other comparatively minor respiratory viruses that pop up every few years".

I was literally pounding my desk asking myself why is Trump taking this as a joke. I mean ok if you don't trust China, fine... But South Korea, Japan, Italy, Taiwan, Singapore. Are our allies in on the joke too?

The writing was on the wall flashing in bright neon signs.