Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 584 posts

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

#321

Post by melling »

While we do need some equipment, instead of treating the symptoms, we could lock ourselves down and avoid the surge.

We saw China stop the problem a month ago. South Korea seems to have stopped the problem with testing.

Buy ourselves a month so we can ramp up testing.

The US just past South Korea and France yesterday in covid-19 cases.

We have 9400 cases and 150 deaths.

By the way, China is reporting no new domestic cases.

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

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

#322

Post by barry-cotter »

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…

That’s on the FDA more than the White House, though obviously that’s where the buck stops. The FDA being incompetent or obstructive during a pandemic seems less than ideal.

“The White House considered issuing an executive order greatly expanding the use of investigational drugs against the new coronavirus, but met with objections from Food and Drug Administration scientists who warned it could pose unneeded risks to patients, according to a senior government official.

The idea to expand testing of drugs and other medical therapies was strongly opposed by the FDA’s senior scientists this week, the official said, and represented the most notable conflict between the FDA and the White House in recent memory.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-sought-to-expand-virus-dr...

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

#323

Post by dirtyid »

netsharc wrote: post #284
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…

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…

>ability to surveil other countries for outbreaks of diseases

This extends beyond the NSC pandemic response team, one would think the intelligence community would have some insights assuming the rebuilt their Chinese network after the CIA debacle in 2010. This wasn't a natural disaster like Maria or Katrina with limited forecasting, WHO was alerted to on Dec 31st.

E: Though TBH I think US would have waffled regardless, even their response to Ebola, Operation United Assistance, didn't materialize until the first US death on US soil. Things aren't real until they affect votes or undermine foreign policy interests.

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

#324

Post by 8note »

dingaling wrote: post #243
lutorm wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A commercialized health care system also has absolutely no incentive to keep excess capacity for emergencies. It seems to be very good at finding the optimal efficiency point, which essentially is very close to "no unused resources in the nimal situation". But societal resiliency requires that health care, utilities, food supply, etc, has some excess capacity just because at some point something will happen. A public…

> A commercialized health care system also has absolutely no incentive to keep excess capacity for emergencies. I disagree, I'd say it's the opposite. A commercial system can value surge capacity for peaks just like an online retailer does; the capacity to handle extra load means extra profit. Whereas in a public health systems like the UK NHS everything is geared towards routine operational targets such as A&E waiti…

this assumes that health care scales in the same way that an online retailer does, no?

the retraining nurses is somewhat of a point in the opposite direction -- the NHS has an easy pool to pull in because of the inefficiency. if all of the nurses were being used efficiently to begin with, there would not be an easy group to bring in.

scaling the number of doctors and nurses available takes a bit more time than hiring a bunch of people to put items in boxes

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

#325

Post by netsharc »

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?

I'm not blaming team B for not knowing about it immediately, I'm blaming them for their shrugging response even after it's terribly obvious what's happened.

And you seem to say Team B is still utterly blameless, it's all Team A's fault.

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

#327

Post by iso947 »

melling wrote: post #321

While we do need some equipment, instead of treating the symptoms, we could lock ourselves down and avoid the surge. We saw China stop the problem a month ago. South Korea seems to have stopped the problem with testing. Buy ourselves a month so we can ramp up testing. The US just past South Korea and France yesterday in covid-19 cases. We have 9400 cases and 150 deaths. By the way, China is reporting no new domestic…

Need both I’m afraid

Cases are irelevent - that’s a function of how widespread the tests are. Do more tests, find more cases. Test people with symptoms find more cases. Allow anyone to take a test find less symptoms.

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

#328

Post by NohatCoder »

omar_a1 wrote: post #296
NohatCoder wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is some bureaucratic nonsense. Setting up and maintaining a ventilator is not rocket science, you can train other staff to do that job pretty quickly. Ancillary tasks may suffer from staff shortage, but if you need one, getting a ventilator and minimal care is a lot better than not getting a ventilator.

I don't know how to operate a ventilator, and have zero medical training, but I'm getting frustrated by the comments claiming medicine is trivially easy. Even using a syringe or blood draw on a patient is something one needs certification to do properly. That isn't bureaucratic nonsense. Having worked with syringes and sterile technique, there are so many ways you can give your patient an infection or otherwise cause…

I'm not suggesting that you or I operate the ventilators, but I refuse to believe that hospitals can't get someone decently qualified to do the job. If the need arise, those 160000 ventilators will be in operation in a heartbeat. The only reason not to get more is if you believe that there won't be that many patients.

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

#329

Post by agurk »

leereeves wrote: post #313
wwweston wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 governm…

From that NY Times article Denmark has an interesting shaped curve that might cause the casual observer to think it's been brought under control.

Denmark were very good at testing widely initially and have subsequently changed the criteria for who gets tested to only be for those presenting with acute symptoms. I haven't been able to find out why they changed but my assumption is limited testing capacity and they're preparing for an increase in the number of cases so want to prioritise.

I will be very interested at the end of this to see how Denmark's response is rated, but it does feel like they have been among the better performers globally.

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

#330

Post by bildung »

leereeves wrote: post #292
bildung wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame game isn't helping at all. This is literally the type of situation where the concept of blameless post mortem, an idea often praised here, originates from. The focus of everyone, regardless of nationality, should now be on solving problems of the present and helping where they can.

Most of us aren't medical professionals or researchers, so there's not really a lot we can do to help, other than stay home and avoid spreading the virus. Meanwhile, life goes on, including the usual political discussions. And those are important. They shouldn't end. The actions of our leaders should be scrutinized intensely at all times, even during a crisis. "The blame game" is not a productive term for holding nat…

There is still a bunch of things that everyone can do. Counter misinformation like fake-remedies or conspiracy theories your family forwards, that kind of stuff, supporting local shops by buying gift cards etc., looking out for at-risk neighbours. Here are a few ideas: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/learning/how-can-we-help-...

I'm all for political discussions! But what help does it do right now discussing whether China could have acted a week earlier? I think the more important questions, analog to blameless postmortem discussions, should center on the institutions and processes. Could the CDC (or similar institutions, I'm not that familiar with the US) implement measures earlier? What hindered them? Money? Politics? etc.

This was also what I was trying to convey in our sibling thread - I think it's more important to analyze why the US takes so long with implementing more impactful measures, e.g. distancing measures like canceling events are still just strong recommondations, and not enforced.

I can really recommend using blameless postmortem as a process for analyzing what went wrong:

https://www.atlassian.com/incident-management/postmortem/bla...

https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/postmortem-...

Post reply on HN