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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

#341

Post by thejohnconway »

untog wrote: post #87
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.

I think you can take this analogy too far. If I were to do so, I'd say that the OP is suggesting that Pearl Harbor was attacked, the President said it was no big deal, just one Japanese plane, and the country collectively twiddled their thumbs while the enemy advanced.

Well, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the US did twiddle its thumbs for at least two years after the outbreak of WW2. Earlier intervention may have virtually stopped it (in Europe at least).

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

#342

Post by jholman »

lightgreen wrote: post #42
MichaelApproved wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you decided to downvote, please at least explain why. Because I don't believe lefts conquered the HN. I downvoted because you assumed it was the “lefts” who were downvoting you.

Well, at least thank you for the explanation!

I'll downvote any comment that complains about downvotes. I didn't get to yours before you edited it, so no downvote from me.

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

#343

Post by lima-lima »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #290
barry-cotter wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has more intensive care unit beds per capita than any other country. Among developed nations they will not come out of this with the highest COVID death toll per capita. The Italian healthcare system is closer to the not for profit ideal and it’s not doing great right now.

I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. There is no universally accepted definition of “intensive care unit bed“ due to fundamentally different approaches to healthcare in different countries. What you can easily compare are hospital beds for acute care - this is a much bigger pool than just icu. You can also easily compare number of doctors per capita. In both of these measures the US system lags behind places…

I agree with the parent. There are a number of places in these comments where the number of ICU beds per capita seem to be justification for personal viewpoint; all cite the same sources.

In the interest of avoiding possible hubris, I think it's worth noting that the numbers in the Statisica chart on ICU beds/100k persons (included in the oft cited link [1]) counts in its data for the USA all ICU beds, while the European numbers come from a study that explicitly exclude [2]:

"...private healthcare providers, neonatal and paediatric intensive care beds, coronary care, stroke and pure renal units"

The 34.7/100k number for the US does not exclude the above. According to [1] the US has:

"There are 68,558 adult beds (medical-surgical 46,795, cardiac 14,445, and other ICU 7318), 5137 pediatric ICU beds, and 22,901 neonatal ICU beds."

Attempting to match the criteria of both studies gives the USA about 46,795 beds. Assuming 320 MM people gives 14.5, not 34.7, per 100k. I haven't looked at the sources for other countries, but we can expect differences in methodologies of ICU bed counting.

I think this casual sort of comparison of national capabilities (like [3]) which lacks rigor is more dangerous than useful. I hope one will take a deeper dive if they're evaluating risks based on the numbers that have been posted.

[1] https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Avai... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00134-012-2627-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_...

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

#344

Post by netsharc »

leereeves wrote: post #333
netsharc wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's drop the analogy and discuss reality. What do you blame Trump for? From what I've read, the US response was hindered mostly by a faulty reagent in the CDC's test kits, which led to an inability to test patients for the virus.[1] How is a faulty reagent Trump's fault? And even with that hinderence, the course of the virus, the number of people hospitalized, and the government policies in the US seem to be procee…

Can I blame him for picking Angry Moustache Bolton? As I said before, Bolton, the best man for the job in Trump's eyes, cut NSC/CDC funding, making the US blinder to threats.

Are you really that much of a Trump-defender? Now it's wholly CDC's fault, so Trump is still innocent?

I'd bother look up his many downplaying and ignorance of the issues, but is it worth it, if you're one of the brainwashed?

As this man said [1], during the 2016 primaries:

> I would, however, add a casual observation: at this point Trump has been the front-runner for long enough that it’s very hard to imagine his supporters suddenly losing faith, because it would be too embarrassing.

> Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. [...]. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren’t.

> Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”

[1] https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-...

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

#345

Post by tibbydudeza »

But it took one very capable, talented and gifted person (“Cast Iron Charlie”) to make Ford become the largest manufacturer of B24 bombers during WW2.

Read on Willow Run Assembly plant and how it came about.

https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/94614-how-fords-willow-...

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

#346

Post by Erikun »

lsc wrote: post #209

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…

More medical personel would be great. Another option would be to train contact tracers, much easier to train than medical personel. That is one of the reasons for Singapore's success, I belive. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51866102

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

#347

Post by oliwarner »

dcolkitt wrote: post #310
oliwarner wrote: post #277

Can they also manufacturer anesthesiologists and acute care nurses? Medical beds? Hospitals? Effective PPE so what few staff we have can carry on working? What about safe, medical grade oxygen? It's not enough to have ventilators and beds for 15% of your population. You need a joined up response across the board. This is good, but it's not enough.

> Can they also manufacturer anesthesiologists and acute care nurses? There's a lot of smart and talented people currently sitting home, doing nothing right now. It may not be medical school but four weeks on Khan Academy can get you up to speed on routine tasks. Then you work under the supervision of a real medical practitioner handles corner cases. This is how medics are trained in wartime. > Medical beds? Hospital…

Even if those were viable solutions —I have reservations— we're still just talking about this. Medical staff are being exposed today due to lack of PPE. Cases are still rocketing.

If we want to avoid the situation where we can only make our parents and grandparents comfortable in death, leadership needs to emerge and commandeer the resources available to our countries. Waiting for volunteers isn't enough.

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

#348

Post by beefield »

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 am getting frustrated by the comments that miss the big picture. There are likely going to be lots of people that are going to die without ventilator. Now, who with any common sense and decency[1] cares if 30% of them are dying because the device was not used properly/broke/whatever if the only other available option is that 100% of them die?

[1] Sigh... I know, I know. American lawyers and legal system.

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

#349

Post by bluenose69 »

A line at the top says "Musk tweets Tesla will make ventilators if there’s a shortage". Well, the "if" part does not really seem to be a question.

With US cases at 10^4 today, and a doubling time of 2.5 days (note 1), and with the estimates of available stockpile, it seems well past time to get started on this. I doubt that making a ventilator is as simple as knitting a scarf.

Another way to contribute would be to figure out a way to make masks quickly.

There's lots to do, and help from the innovative and diligent will be greatly appreciated by those who remain.

1. Doubling time inferred from a regression in log space of the last 2 weeks of data provided at https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_....

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

#350

Post by beefield »

abeld wrote: post #338
NohatCoder wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very short guide: Put a mouthpiece on the patient, connect the mouthpiece to the tube from the ventilator, turn the ventilator on. Longer guide: Read the manual for the specific ventilator and have fun adjusting air mixture, pump frequency, pressure, volume and other stuff. Choose one of several different models of mouthpiece, with or without tubes, depending on patient needs. Learn about different failure modes and…

The type of ventillators required by the most serious cases are much more complicated: as I understand it, it involves push a tube down to the lungs, and the machine breathing instead of the patient, i.e. it has to carefully monitor and regulate the pressure etc. Already the "push tube down to the lungs" part is quite a challenge: avoiding damage to the vocal cords, or to the lungs, etc.

Should we then not be damn sure that there are shitloads of the simpler ventilators so that the complicated ones can be fully reserved for the serious cases?
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