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

#131

Post by shigawire » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #119

jjeaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are a bit confused about the position the country is in right now. Regulations and regulators can and will be damned in an emergency. Of course, all reasonable precautions should be taken when producing medical equipment. But if someone needs a ventilator, they are going to die without it. It doesn't matter that there is a small chance that complications arise or some flaw in the ventilator causes it not…

It seems that in time of actual crisis, we're all libertarians.

Only those who can afford medical care will receive it?

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

#132

Post by whiddershins » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

thereare5lights wrote: post #67

> 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.

Oh, wait. Hold on. There was a time where people weren’t perfect?

And by perfect, I of course mean perfect judged by hindsight.

That’s just ... I mean .. people should be perfect! And prescient!

Good point.

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

#133

Post by srl » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:19 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #119

jjeaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are a bit confused about the position the country is in right now. Regulations and regulators can and will be damned in an emergency. Of course, all reasonable precautions should be taken when producing medical equipment. But if someone needs a ventilator, they are going to die without it. It doesn't matter that there is a small chance that complications arise or some flaw in the ventilator causes it not…

It seems that in time of actual crisis, we're all libertarians.

Well, maybe we're (almost) all pragmatists.

I have pretty libertarian impulses. I'm pretty pleased to see a lot of pointless (or point-light) regulations get kicked to the curb, although I certainly wish the circumstances weren't necessary.

I also hate immigration restrictions of all sorts. But... okay, right now, travel restrictions make some sense. I'll take it (and then fight to undo them in 12 months).

It turns out, some of the things I really really care about, my preferences would do harm in a pandemic. Maybe that's true outside of a pandemic, too -- but it's a lot easier to recognize when the magnitude of the effect is large!

I think at the end of the day, that's part of what's driving all this pragmatism: the effect size of "getting policy right" is suddenly much larger than it usually is. Life is no longer close to being a zero-sum game, and everybody can see it. That's what "we're all in this together" means, and people are acting like they believe it.

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

#134

Post by jariel » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:20 AM UTC

I still can't believe that most large companies were not offering everything they could several weeks ago.

All Army/Navy/Air Force medical personnel should already be deployed to the field with makeshift drive-in testing spots. The Army is good at creating controlled zones. They can direct traffic while someone takes a swab.

All other military personnel should be working with hospitals to do 'anything non-medically related'. Taking names, providing transportation, direction people, providing backup generators.

All labs capable of doing testing should be preparing/getting processes ready.

3D printers printing whatever they can for equipment support.

Anyone laid off should be hired immediately by the government to provide free grocery and medicine delivery to those quarantined. This would serve as an economic stimulus.

All trained medical staff in the country should be triaging based on the 'new normal': family doctors are no longer family doctors, they only treat regular patients if needed, otherwise, it's 4 days a week dealing with Corona.

A tidal wave is about to hit the nation, it's 'all hands on deck'.

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

#135

Post by dmix » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:21 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #129

dmix wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The question is typically between hoarders and people who need it, at least in the context of a popular figure tweeting about it.

It's available in many countries over the counter, so you can't be sure it will only be purchased with a predefined need.

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

#136

Post by danenania » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

cheese4242 wrote: post #122

danenania wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The need to rapidly scale up testing for a dangerous new pathogen clearly is not unprecedented, considering it happened during the previous administration. It seems pretty analogous to me, apart from the stakes turning out to be much higher this time around :-/

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

#137

Post by wolco » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

dogecoinbase wrote: post #88

hodgesrm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being argumentative I would point out that many Americans died unnecessarily at the beginning of WWII as well. This is a common pattern in wars.

We are not at war. We are +T two months since the first confirmed case in the USA and had warning nearly a month prior to that, and the Federal government has done almost nothing of substance other than reject tests and advice from nations who have been fighting this far better than we have, because they have functional health services.

Weren't they the first to limit then ban travel from Wuhan / China. To say they have done nothing sounds political. Good and poor decisions were made.

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

#138

Post by ajross » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:26 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #80

Meanwhile, actual ventilator manufacturers are not getting many orders: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/18/ventilator-...

Right, because no one has stepped up to write a check. Hospitals are businesses, they're not going to do this on their own. GM is a business, they're not donating those ventilators, they're trying to make a sale into a new market. States, most of them, can't do it because their budgets are fixed by their constitutions and they can't take a loan or write a bond without a referendum.

There's basically one entity in this country with the ability to actually make this happen, and the people trying to point out that it isn't doing anything useful are fighting downvotes here just to be dark enough to read.

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

#139

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

JunkDNA wrote: post #79

asdfman123 wrote: post #2

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

Have you ever been in an executive leadership position that required you to make tough decisions? As someone who recently has entered this realm, let me tell you: most of the decisions in front of you are essentially choices between a whole bunch of options that all have one thing in common: they totally suck. You learn quickly that you are going to make harmful decisions because sometimes a good option isn’t in the…

A lockdown in January was not the only option.

The fact of the matter is that the USA was in the extremely luxurious position of seeing this crisis coming from a mile away. First China, then South Korea, then Italy acting as the canary in the European coal mine, then several other European nations... every expert was raising the alarm and screaming at the top of their lungs that the USA was going to be next.

Did the administration start preparing then? Nope. Instead, the guy in charge called it a "hoax" and did everything he could to first ignore it completely, then downplay it as much as possible, then telling people it will all pass soon... all the while flatly refusing to take any responsibility whatsoever and having the audacity to rate his administrations response as a 10 out of 10.

That's not "leadership". It's sheer, unadulterated idiocy.

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

#140

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #119

jjeaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are a bit confused about the position the country is in right now. Regulations and regulators can and will be damned in an emergency. Of course, all reasonable precautions should be taken when producing medical equipment. But if someone needs a ventilator, they are going to die without it. It doesn't matter that there is a small chance that complications arise or some flaw in the ventilator causes it not…

It seems that in time of actual crisis, we're all libertarians.

Personally I’m in favor of a (partially) centrally planned emergency economy manufacturing and distributing (and possibly rationing) medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, personal protective gear, antiseptics, etc. where needed around the country; paying for medical costs of anyone who catches COVID19; directly disbursing cash to residents who are quarantined, isolated, or lose their jobs during the crisis; banning evictions, doing whatever possible to delay personal/small business expenses like rent or loan payments; directly hiring large numbers of young people without dependents to do socially necessary jobs like distributing food to quarantined people or tracing contacts of anyone infected or manning phone hotlines to call people who don’t follow mass media and to screen patients before they talk to medical personnel; forcing media outlets to play regular publicly produced informational content and shutting down media outlets spreading misinformation; and so on..

I would hardly call that libertarian, but YMMV.