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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

#361

Post by naveen99 »

malandrew wrote: post #224
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…

It’s not that we’re bad at training medical personnel. It’s that the AMA acts as a cartel to limit the number of physicians train to keep income high. We just need to allow more people into medical schools and make more residencies available.

The number of hospitals and hospitals beds is also controlled by certificates of need.

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

#362

Post by makomk »

leereeves wrote: post #301
tomp wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believing a proven notorious liar is your own fault. Look at actions, not words. China locking down Wuhan should have been enough of a warning sign. But realistically, even now most people & governments are complacent (few passed martial law).

> China locking down Wuhan should have been enough of a warning sign. It was. Within a week the world was announcing countermeasures like travel restrictions. That lockdown was on January 23, less than two months ago.

It wasn't. Countries like Italy and Germany believed China, and that alone would probably have been enough to doom efforts in the countries that didn't. Also, as the other reply says, patient zero was likely already in the US, so any effort at successfully containing this would have required rounding up and quarantining people from Hubei already in the USA and their close contacts back when the press were still downplaying it. (That's effectively what China did, though it was... a little ugly, shall we say.)

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

#363

Post by phaemon »

nickik wrote: post #359

That's a total fantasy when you consider rare earths. And they know it. The military can produce basically nothing without resources for China.

Nope, rare earth elements are common pretty much everywhere. The only reason companies buy them from China is because they're cheaper due to their lower wages and lack of environmental protection.

When China limited export of rare earths, leading to a dispute with Western countries, all that happened was suddenly Western mining firms became viable and attracted investment. China then dropped the export limits and dropped the price to force those companies out of business.

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

#364

Post by maxerickson »

lutorm wrote: post #220
jacquesm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Medicare and state licensing agencies more or less control the hospital bed capacity in the US, not commercial incentives.

Want to build a hospital in many states? Better be able to convince the licensing agency there is need for the beds. Want to build a hospital and accept Medicare? Better meet all the structural requirements they put in place.

Open the March update pdf here and look at the "excess" column on page 4:

https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/hfsrb/InventoriesData/Monthl...

The state has big impact on the capacity of the medical system.

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

#365

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

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…

Private providers are not immune to oversights and waste.

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

#366

Post by [deleted] »

netsharc wrote: post #356
leereeves wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Angry Moustache Bolton > one of the brainwashed Talk like that isn't appropriate here. As deng says, this is a place for curious, open-minded discussion, not partisan name calling.

Fine... and any response to the substance of my posts? To pivot to the psychology, I'm going to conclude: Here you are, changing the topic, because as I said above, you are a Trump defender (I will assume this until I see a denial) who can't admit that he's been taken for a ride, because, as I copy-pasted above, you think "I'm not a gullible person!". If you want to show me you're curious and open-minded, respond to…

[deleted]

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

#367

Post by [deleted] »

netsharc wrote: post #356
leereeves wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Angry Moustache Bolton > one of the brainwashed Talk like that isn't appropriate here. As deng says, this is a place for curious, open-minded discussion, not partisan name calling.

Fine... and any response to the substance of my posts? To pivot to the psychology, I'm going to conclude: Here you are, changing the topic, because as I said above, you are a Trump defender (I will assume this until I see a denial) who can't admit that he's been taken for a ride, because, as I copy-pasted above, you think "I'm not a gullible person!". If you want to show me you're curious and open-minded, respond to…

[deleted]

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

#368

Post by onion2k »

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…

Right, because no one has stepped up to write a check.

If only billionaire Elon Musk knew someone who could pay.

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

#369

Post by dillonmckay »

wolco wrote: post #137
dogecoinbase wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, if it was a true ban, nobody that had travelled from Wuhan would have been allowed back.

The ban did not apply to US citizens.

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

#370

Post by leereeves »

wwweston wrote: post #352
leereeves wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The only countries that appear to have handled it better are South Korea and Japan. How many better examples would it take before one concludes that it's possible to have done better and there is a responsibility to do so? I'd say one is adequate. > 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. Take off the labels and…

This is daily data. The effectiveness of interventions doesn't change every day.

You're just assigning meaning to random noise.

I agree it's possible to do better and we should learn from other nations, but I think it's unrealistic to expect that USA be #1 in everything. Sometimes other nations will do better.

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