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

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

#61

Post by manigandham »

matheweis wrote: post #38
manigandham wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cancelled international travel plans in mid-January because of the expanding virus within China and the first cases in other countries. It was clear by then that there was no containment and the spread was underway. The federal govt has even more insight than average people watching the news and should've acted aggressively in closing borders and improving capacity. US (and EU) have reacted terribly late to all of…

> The federal govt has even more insight than average people watching the news We'd like to believe this, but are we sure it is true? The internet and social media have given us realtime global connectivity. Sans filtering out disinformation and accessing truly classified information, we have it all at our fingertips. > ... and should've acted aggressively in closing borders and improving capacity. I was laying in be…

Yes, we have very capable intelligence services with plenty of resources. I guarantee they knew of the first cases within days back in November.

I don't need to call the government to tell them to do their job.

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

#62

Post by empath75 »

I’m not actually sure the bottleneck will be our stock of ventilators, nor do I think it will be very difficult to build enough within the next month or two — at least not to the point where we’d need a wartime mobilization

They don’t run themselves, however. They require specialists, many of whom that will themselves catch the virus and have to quarantine. It’s not just doctors but anesthesiologists, nurses, technicians, etc.

Not to mention just having physical room in the hospitals.

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

#63

Post by Retric »

MegaButts wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

> Having cultural capital to call on is invaluable. How similar is the culture today compared to 75+ years ago?

On the surface it’s very different. But in practice it’s surprisingly close as successfully running any truly large scale manufacturing means direction flows down from the top and innovation flows up from the bottom. Automation may be replacing a lot of labor, but cars are also vastly more complex and have far tighter tolerances.

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

#64

Post by empath75 »

cheese4242 wrote: post #57
danenania wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not convinced things would have played out much differently under any other administration to be honest. Note that many other western countries are struggling as well.

I have a metaphysical certainly that Obama would have handled this better are you kidding me. Even Bush would have.

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

#65

Post by lightgreen »

_2d30 wrote: post #59
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

There's an idea of civic and social duty. The basic idea is that when one's society faces an existential crisis then those in that society with the means to help have a duty to do so. This is because the society in which they exist has provided them with a social structure that has, ideally, provided them with stability, some amount of prosperity, etc. It seems some people don't believe in this. It's sad. This isn't…

May I add a controversial comment again please? It will be downvoted again, sadly, I'll create a new account after this thread.

People who say that Musk should use all his resources to help society, usually do nothing themselves (I'm not speaking about you personally). It's pure virtue signalling.

Elon musk can loose 10% of his money switching from producing Teslas to producing ventilators.

But everyone can use their 10% of time to help homeless, care for elders. Or at least donate 10% of their income to coronavirus charities.

But somehow people think that Musk has to spend his resoures, but they don't have to. That's not fair.

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

#66

Post by bilbo0s »

asdfman123 wrote: post #58
bilbo0s wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 additi…

I just saw on Twitter that hospital in NY is already "double respirating" people, meaning two people share one respirator, so it seems the time to act was well before yesterday. I don't see how people can read that and not say "Holy crap, let's not let people suffocate to death on their own phlegm" if it just means spending a few billion dollars.

Obviously the time to act was yesterday. But we've got a chance to act today, so let's get the details of these devices shipped to Detroit in a hurry and get the retooling process started.

We should also be asking China what their capacity is? I do know they've been supplying Italy with extra ventilators, but we should see if they are able to make even more. I mean, we just need to find ways to get the requisite medical equipment into the field on a global scale. That's PPE's, that's masks, that's ventilators, that's the diagnostics, etc. Between China and the US, there is no reason that shouldn't be able to be done.

We can only start from where we are is what I'm saying. Yes, we're unprepared. Yes, we should have been prepared. Now that all that's been conceded, let's hurry up and get prepared.

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

#67

Post by thereare5lights »

> There are going to be a lot of comments about how we messed up, wasted time, etc., but they miss the point.

That, ironically, misses the point of the existing comments about how we wasted time.

By wasting time, lots of people are going to die that didn't need to die. None of that has to do with mobilization itself or the issues that we run into during mobilization, it has to do with when we decided to mobilize.

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

#68

Post by lightgreen »

vvanders wrote: post #56
lightgreen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess people at the factory do few close contacts which can lead to virus transmission. And I guess they are supplied with hand sanitizers and handwashing is mandatory. On the other hand, people get paid, the factory is saved from bankruptcy so people can continue working in the factory even after the end of the outbreak. I'm not sure that closing the factory is a universally good decision for society. Edit: Englis…

Considering that the virus can live for up to 9 days on metal, glass or plastic[1] I'm not sure that mandatory hand washing is going to do much in an assembly line where everyone interacts directly vehicles on the line. [1] https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-670...

I think they work in gloves (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/26/18744304/c... for the picture).

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

#69

Post by malandrew »

empath75 wrote: post #62

I’m not actually sure the bottleneck will be our stock of ventilators, nor do I think it will be very difficult to build enough within the next month or two — at least not to the point where we’d need a wartime mobilization They don’t run themselves, however. They require specialists, many of whom that will themselves catch the virus and have to quarantine. It’s not just doctors but anesthesiologists, nurses, technic…

The issue as you highlighted is correct. We lack intensivists. In terms of ventilators and critical care beds, the US is actual well ahead of most other countries.

https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Avai...

The reason people think we have fewer beds per capita is because they are counting regular hospital beds and don't include beds available in outpatient facilities.

What I was unable to find out is how many intensivists per capita are available per country. If anyone can find that data, I'd be curious to see it.

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

#70

Post by cm2012 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #47
cm2012 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They don't need to because their hospital systems never got overwhelmed.
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