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

#311

Post by 8note » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #302

netsharc wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't both deserve blame? Imagine 2 forest firefighting teams who guard their own section of forest, and don't trust each other. Team B notices a bit of smoke rising out of Forest A, asks them about it, and Team A says "Don't worry, we have it under control". When the reports of fires in the outskirts of Forest B comes, team B is too relaxed about it, claims they have it under control without even going there for a c…

Imagine the same scenario, but now Team A and Team B are on opposite sides of the world, and Team A is an authoritarian regime that won't let anyone get near Forest A and won't let anyone talk about Forest A, and instead of a forest fire, the danger is microscopic, invisible to the naked eye and to satellites. Would you still blame Team B for not knowing about the danger immediately?

Japan confirmed it's first case January 15th.

what was Trump doing for the past two months?

would an extra month's notice have done anything? I get the sense Obama could have told him exactly when it would happen, and he'd have still done nothing until American deaths started ramping up

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

#312

Post by wwweston » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:37 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #216

mlb_hn wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leadership in the US Government wasted a lot of time trying to play down the pandemic [1] as did large (conservative) news organizations [2]. Both are now trying to blame China, arguably to shift blame from themselves. It didn't need to be that way; South Korea's government action back in January helped them while the US Government's action hindered response [3]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-c…

Everyone should be blaming China. They jailed the doctor who tried to warn us. They lied to the world. They "issued an order to hospitals, clinics and other healthcare units strictly prohibiting the release of any information about treatment of this new disease."[1] That's not about shifting blame from the US government. That's placing the blame where it belongs. As the famously conservative editorial board of the Wa…

This can all be true and it's still worth nothing to talk about this problem as if it we can wash our hands of blame and assign it all to China.

The US government is not responsible for the emergence of the epidemic. The US government is definitely responsible for the policy responses in the US that have shaped the course of its emergence here.

And we can see that several governments that are not China have handled a threat that emerged outside their borders and about which they presumably had no better access to information about... much better than we have.

Maybe there's blame to cast on China, but it's a lot more productive for citizens of each country to hold their own governments to account.

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

#313

Post by leereeves » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:44 AM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #312

leereeves wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should be blaming China. They jailed the doctor who tried to warn us. They lied to the world. They "issued an order to hospitals, clinics and other healthcare units strictly prohibiting the release of any information about treatment of this new disease."[1] That's not about shifting blame from the US government. That's placing the blame where it belongs. As the famously conservative editorial board of the Wa…

This can all be true and it's still worth nothing to talk about this problem as if it we can wash our hands of blame and assign it all to China. The US government is not responsible for the emergence of the epidemic. The US government is definitely responsible for the policy responses in the US that have shaped the course of its emergence here. And we can see that several governments that are not China have handled a…

The NY Times has some great charts showing the number of new cases each day for many nations.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/world/coronav...

The only countries that appear to have handled it better are South Korea and Japan.

If I mixed up the charts for the US and other nations except those and Italy (which is much worse), you wouldn't be able to tell which is which.

So when you say:

> The US government is definitely responsible for the policy responses in the US that have shaped the course of its emergence here.

I wonder what you mean. The shape of its emergence here is exactly like the shape of its emergence in a dozen other countries.

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

#314

Post by 8note » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:47 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #138

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 thi…

the people that are most likely to need the ventilators aren't exactly hospitals' profit centres either.

are those businesses really going to want to fill all their space with Medicare patients? with fewer ventilators, I imagine they can decline care to more people?

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

#315

Post by Gibbon1 » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:50 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #305

Gibbon1 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a few people that were in the far east during the SARS-COV1 outbreak it scared the living shit out them. Those countries including China reacted swiftly and forcibly once they were aware of what they were up against. Meanwhile in the Trump Administration was actively blocking attempts to perform surveillance by public health authorities as recently as Feb 27th.

> the Trump Administration was actively blocking attempts to perform surveillance by public health authorities as recently as Feb 27th. [citation needed]

I know your mind is made up but here you go.

> State health officials joined Chu in asking the CDC and Food and Drug Administration to waive privacy rules and allow clinical tests in a research lab, citing the threat of significant loss of life. The CDC and FDA said no. "We felt like we were sitting, waiting for the pandemic to emerge," Chu told the Times. "We could help. We couldn't do anything." They held off for a couple of weeks, but on Feb. 25, Chu and her colleagues "began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval,"

https://theweek.com/speedreads/901405/seattle-lab-uncovered-...

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

#316

Post by leereeves » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #315

leereeves wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Trump Administration was actively blocking attempts to perform surveillance by public health authorities as recently as Feb 27th. [citation needed]

I know your mind is made up but here you go. > State health officials joined Chu in asking the CDC and Food and Drug Administration to waive privacy rules and allow clinical tests in a research lab, citing the threat of significant loss of life. The CDC and FDA said no. "We felt like we were sitting, waiting for the pandemic to emerge," Chu told the Times. "We could help. We couldn't do anything." They held off for a…

Thanks for the link.

So federal regulators (not Trump) told researchers not to test samples from a research study without the patients' permission?

Seems reasonable to me. They should have gotten permission from the participants instead of asking regulators to waive patient privacy.

> as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget Sound region.

> To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea,

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...

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

#317

Post by def8cefe » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #77

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.

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.

American casualties at the beginning of WW2 were actually quite low as the US didn't enter the war until 1942 (WW2 began in 1939).

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

#318

Post by bildung » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:55 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #298

bildung wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japans response was profoundly different. This is how airport arrivals were handled in Jan 24 in Japan: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ202001270041.html This is how arrivals in the US were handled a few days ago, this hall practially is a breeding ground for new infections: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/us/airports-coronavirus.h... My point is NOT Japan good USA bad, I just want to show that there was the o…

What exactly are we supposed to see in those links? I see two photos of people standing close together. Neither group is practicing social distancing. The Japanese are wearing masks (not N95 masks) whose effectiveness is still being debated, but that's about custom, not government response. The photo from America shows a bigger room, but I suspect that's just a choice of photo and Japanese airports had big rooms full…

The important point of the Japanese mask-wearing custom is the reason why they are worn: To protect others from infection. That purpose doesn't need N95 protection.

The current US Airport situation was in the news here in Germany, but perhaps not in the US. It breaks with most distancing guidelines. People are much too close to each other (compared to the advised 1-2m distance), and shared the same room (and air) for many hours. What good is that whole measure if you practically guarantee that more infected people will enter the country afterwards?

My overall point was related to the dates of both posts. Yes, on paper both Japan and the US implemented similar-sounding measures at about the same time. But one has to look at the actual implementation.

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

#319

Post by massysett » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:56 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #216

mlb_hn wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leadership in the US Government wasted a lot of time trying to play down the pandemic [1] as did large (conservative) news organizations [2]. Both are now trying to blame China, arguably to shift blame from themselves. It didn't need to be that way; South Korea's government action back in January helped them while the US Government's action hindered response [3]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-c…

Everyone should be blaming China. They jailed the doctor who tried to warn us. They lied to the world. They "issued an order to hospitals, clinics and other healthcare units strictly prohibiting the release of any information about treatment of this new disease."[1] That's not about shifting blame from the US government. That's placing the blame where it belongs. As the famously conservative editorial board of the Wa…

Despite all these previous lies, the US press now reports “no new domestic coronavirus cases in China!” as if there is some reason to believe it’s true.

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

#320

Post by agurk » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 8:56 AM UTC

0xWTF wrote: post #222

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say: surely the US military maintains a manufacturing core? I’m a metal fabricator by trade, and one thing you quickly notice is: with a machine shop and a fabrication shop you are tooled up to build the machines to manufacture almost anything.

Folks, military physician here, operating at the national level on the analysis that informs these projects. The recent post on HN about the MIT $100 ventilator is one of the things that got this rolling. Manufacturing is spinning up. What I really need is developers on this project: https://github.com/joshua-s/coronavirus-diary

From the README file on the coronavirus-diary:

Coronavirus Diary is a mobile application that allows users to record their medical status, location, and activities to an encrypted vault on their device. If the user experiences symptoms in line with the disease, they will be prompted to contact their physician.

In the case that a user contracts the disease, they can release their historical data to a physician to aid in treatment, research, and containment effort.