To everyone saying "great, but why didn't this start months ago?" Well, sure, but the second best time to start is now.
No better time to get familiar with the "sunk cost fallacy".
GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
121–130 of 584 posts
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It seems indisputable that if we had manufactured a million tests in the first two weeks after cases started showing up, we’d be a lot better off right now. And realistically, “a lot” is probably a massive understatement. Rare as they are in politics, we have a case where two presidential administrations faced almost directly analogous challenges. The results would appear to speak for themselves.
"directly analogous challenges"? I don't buy it.
This is unprecedented.
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#123Earlier 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.
I only learned there was an H1N1 epidemic in 2009 after this whole thing blew up. And I was definitely old enough to have remembered it, and I followed the news back then. I guess that's a reflection on how competently it was handled.
I guess that's a reflection on how competently it was handled.
There were 60 million people in the US infected by H1N1 in 2009, and 12 000 of them died. It wasn't handled any better than COVID-19, the only difference between then and now is that COVID-19 is much, much, much worse than H1N1. We just got lucky in 2009.
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#124Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an overstatement of what he said. He had been posting about possible medical treatments [1], which is why the tweet you linked to starts with "That said" before talking about panicking and redirecting medical resources away from people who need it. Do you know why? The drug he was posting about before that tweet, `chloroquine`, is already facing shortages around the globe for people already on it for non-COVID…
He also literally said "The coronavirus panic is dumb": https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1236029449042198528
Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe the emphasis was on the "panic" part.
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#126Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 the absolute risk must be low for surface transmission. Otherwise we'd just be getting our coronavirus from the grocery store and deliveries?
From what I've seen it survives 2-3x less on cardboard[1] compared to plastic/metal. Probably a vector, but less likely than hard surfaces.
That said the best way to not transmit it is to shut down non-essential services and focus on flattening the curve.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200317-covid-19-how-lon...
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#128> Australia's military is on standby to dispatch more engineers and health professionals to deal with the outbreak of coronavirus as the nation's response to the global pandemic ramps up.
> The Australian Defence Force has already deployed specialist staff to work with the federal Department of Health as part of its response to the spread of COVID-19.
> ADF engineers have also been sent to the regional Victorian town of Shepparton to help manufacture face masks to combat a global shortfall.
...
> Discussions are also taking place for engineers and other specialist staff within the ADF to help establish pop-up fever clinics.
> The ADF has appointed three-star general John Frewen to head a new taskforce to lead the military's response to the pandemic.
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chloroquine is already on the WHO list of 'essential medicines', and can be made very cheaply as a generic. Any shortages would be quite temporary indeed; the last thing you want to do in such circumstances is suppress latent demand for it and repeat the whole masks/respirators/hand sanitizer fiasco.
That doesn't mean much to the people with Lupus having their pharmacist tell them it's on "backorder", far less than not having hand sanitizer. One would hope it's only temporary. On the brighter side, France has a company promising to produce millions of doses: > French manufacturer Sanofi has said it could hypothetically offer enough doses of Plaquenil - a drug containing the molecule hydroxychloroquine - to treat…
> That doesn't mean much to the people with Lupus having their pharmacist tell them it's on "backorder"
Well, we'd have to choose between telling the people with Lupus that, and telling the folks with SARS-CoV-2 the same thing, except even worse (because suppliers have not had a chance to react to that increased demand). Are we sure that the former is preferable?
Re: GM’s CEO Offers to Make Ventilators in WWII-Style Mobilization
#130Earlier 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
You're right, Elon has no inherent responsibility to solve this (he's not Batman to call on whenever we need). Many large companies are already open to helping. There's no shortage of willing capacity. What they need is approval and guidance from the government, that's where the failure is. Notice there's still no reply taking up GM on their offer.
GM should just start the process of making them anyway.