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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

#201

Post by Digory »

ksolanki wrote: post #146
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…

I agree that we are in a unprecedented situation but I am not sure that the regulations will just be “damned”.

Liability will be damned.

If there's a military requisition of ventilators, the government alone sets the standards and quality. And the government alone gets to complain about violations. Maybe it wants ISO 9000, but I imagine they'll take 1960s class ventilators if they can be ready by a date certain.

You, citizen, can sue the government and allege that the MASH ventilator spec was reckless and deprived you of your constitutional rights. And you will be laughed out of court at ISO 9000 levels. With few exceptions, soldiers don't get sued for shooting people with guns, and battlefield surgeons don't commit malpractice.

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

#203

Post by salawat »

adrr wrote: post #179
mgerdts wrote: post #96

Manufacture of medical devices has specific regulation around Good Manufacturing Processes [1] (GMP, one of many GxPs). This requires a Quality Management System [2] (QMS) and very specific training for everyone involved. Pretty much any manufacturer that is not already manufacturing in accordance with 21 CFR Part 820 [3] and related regulations will have a ton of work to establish a suitable QMS. I'd like to think t…

No one cares about any of this stuff. Rules need to be tossed aside to minimize loss of life. All FDA rules surrounding drugs need to be suspended for COVID19 patients. We need to start doing what china did and start using non approved anti-virals to save people's lives. We need to start vaccinating at risk populations(75 or older) with the trial vaccine if it is shown to be effective in the upcoming weeks. We cant w…

Woah there. Don't be so hasty to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Don't need another Thalidomide dropped on us just because things are looking a bit grim. It's one thing to ask "Do we really need to let this stand in our way right now?"; It's an entirely different kettle of fish to say "Screw it, if it kills the virus anything goes!"

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

#204

Post by fludlight »

SiVal wrote: post #145

It already does a lot of inflexible manufacturing, often by outsourcing overseas, but I'd love to see part of the US military converted to a rapid-response, highly flexible, fully-domestic manufacturing system. LOTS of very flexible automation, so they could take a wide range of designs and raw materials and rapidly switch from making one thing to making another and the ability to hugely ramp up production on demand…

This should be distributed geographically, meaning the pork could be spread around, meaning it is remotely possible to pass.

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

#205

Post by leereeves »

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.

The world's response was late because the Chinese government lied about the virus. Just two months ago the WHO, relying on China's statements, said:

> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China[1]

Two months ago the WHO said they didn't have clear evidence coronavirus was contagious. Now we're on a "war footing". That's not wasting time.

1: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=t...

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

#207

Post by unishark »

jacquesm wrote: post #182
spectramax wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the healthcare system and medical supply chain are two separate things. A universal healthcare system (for E.g. Sweden) still has a normal supply chain. The only difference is the profit motives are not present and the government can effectively pump money in without violating economic principles of supply/demand and pricing.

A commercialized health care system has lots of perverse incentives leading to price increases and profiteering. This sets the weakest fraction of the population up for losing all they've built up in the last 3 months of their life while barely impacting the strong. It also means that those hospitals don't care about overpaying for their supplies and medication (but not their workforce) because they get to pass those…

The US has had a private healthcare system for its entire history. Economics and incentives were the same throughout that history. Meanwhile prices only became stupid very recently.

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

x0 wrote: post #157
1propionyl wrote: post #51

To everyone saying "great, but why didn't this start months ago?" Well, sure, but the second best time to start is now.

It couldn't have started months ago. If this happened mid-January, we'd have be deafened by the screeching of GM's shareholders, angrily rubbing their antennae together. The only time something like this can happen is when people have woken up to the crisis.

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by lsc »

Yeah, I'm personally not too concerned with the "stuff" end of things. This is America; in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, we remain a manufacturing powerhouse. Apply enough money and we'll get whatever "stuff" we need on pretty short order.

I think the big problem is medical technicians and doctors. My feeling is that we should be focusing on training up medical people on a massive scale, as that's something that the USA is notoriously bad at. Perhaps the military could provide medical technicians the fastest? lots of healthy young people who are trained in the use of serious PPE? (I wonder how the procedures differ between nuclear, chemical and biological threats like these?)

People talk about beds... but the problem isn't physical beds. I could make you a physical bed. the problem is doctor and medical technician labor to make the bed useful.

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

#210

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

There was in fact a game plan in place:

Qualls N, Levitt A, Kanade N, et al. Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza — United States, 2017. MMWR Recomm Rep 2017;66(No. RR-1):1–34. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.rr6601a1

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm

Referenced in the US CDC's Feb 25 press telebriefing:

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/t0225-cdc-telebriefi...

Or you might want to hear from the expert who literally wrote the book on pandemic response, a quarter-centry ago:

"'Every American Should Be Outraged' Says Pandemic Expert About Government Response"

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/03/18/us-government-res...

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