Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious, I'd think there are a bunch of people willing to provide financing, no?
There are some and I'm working on it. But every extra step adds delay.
How many zeroes are you talking about?
Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
61–70 of 145 posts
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#62Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#63My sister's an ER doc in Baltimore and they're getting one mask per 12-hour shift. That quantity doesn't protect them from anything or their patients
My understanding is they are good for 4 hours. When the masks are saturated they are not effective. Maybe it's better to have 2 and rotate them out. I saw someone else post this on HN... Worth a look. http://www.imcclinics.com/english/index.php/news/view?id=83
That's a valid idea, but it's unfortunately not something she's in control of. All the PPE protocols are coming from people higher than her.
They're also not getting eye protection at all so she's taken to wearing her glasses instead of contacts. Not as good as actual eye protection, but it's better than absolutely nothing.
In short, they don't have what they need.
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#64Let this be a lesson to learn for western democracies to not put all of their eggs in one basket. Diversification, localization and strategic globalization of the supply chain should be at the forefront of the issues to be discussed, ratified and acted upon after this pandemic is over. When one country manufactures 90% of world's goods (not accurate, to make a point), while the top 1% gets their bonuses for increasin…
But can this be done without abandoning capitalism as a primary driving economic model? It would require a reversal in economic steering (tariffs, government intervention, etc) of enormous scale. The only thing that has come to matter is the hunt to squeeze every penny, we have forgotten to do anything else.
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#65There is reason to believe that the hospital mask shortage is due in no small part to employee (and patient/family) theft of masks and not necessarily due to dramatically increased need at hospitals (at least not yet). I say this as a resident physician at an urban hospital in the US. We're now severely low on N95 masks and moderately low on surgical masks but we have only had less than a dozen confirmed covid-19 cas…
This. There are barely any covid 19 patients yet hospitals are low on masks due to panic. Beds are still open and ventilators contrary to media claims are not currently on a shortage.
There are also not nearly as many tests being run as there are patients with suspect symptoms. Yes, the number of confirmed COVID-19 patients may be low, but that doesn't mean that the number of people with the disease is low.
According to the CDC[1], you can contact your healthcare provider for the possibility of a test if (and only if) you are in close contact with someone with the disease or if you're in a community where there's ongoing spread. That's still a very limited subset of people who might have the disease.
There's very limited insight into who does or does not have the disease in the US.
[1]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/t...
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#66I keep seeing articles like this pop up. During one of the first coronavirus press conferences, the White House invited CEOs from Walmart, Target, CVS, etc. – presumably to show strength of the private sector. On the flip side, why can't we enlist money and resources from the private sector to quickly fix some of these supply issues? For example: - Convert car factories to produce masks and ventilators. - Convert con…
Turns out N95 masks are quite high-tech, and even China is having trouble scaling up its production. They're made of a material, meltblown fabric, which only a limited number of factories are capable of producing. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/8149292...
The only real facility for high volume production in the US is 3M in Minnesota, I believe. Current estimates place supply chain matching demand in 80-90 days (though I don't know if that's domestic or worldwide).
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#67Let this be a lesson to learn for western democracies to not put all of their eggs in one basket. Diversification, localization and strategic globalization of the supply chain should be at the forefront of the issues to be discussed, ratified and acted upon after this pandemic is over. When one country manufactures 90% of world's goods (not accurate, to make a point), while the top 1% gets their bonuses for increasin…
But can this be done without abandoning capitalism as a primary driving economic model? It would require a reversal in economic steering (tariffs, government intervention, etc) of enormous scale. The only thing that has come to matter is the hunt to squeeze every penny, we have forgotten to do anything else.
Tariffs result in domestic industries that can't compete. Germany has an export oriented manufacturing sector that employs lots of people and the US doesn't not because of Chins but because of US management.
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#68Let this be a lesson to learn for western democracies to not put all of their eggs in one basket. Diversification, localization and strategic globalization of the supply chain should be at the forefront of the issues to be discussed, ratified and acted upon after this pandemic is over. When one country manufactures 90% of world's goods (not accurate, to make a point), while the top 1% gets their bonuses for increasin…
But can this be done without abandoning capitalism as a primary driving economic model? It would require a reversal in economic steering (tariffs, government intervention, etc) of enormous scale. The only thing that has come to matter is the hunt to squeeze every penny, we have forgotten to do anything else.
Look at farming subsidies as an example.
The government funds some percent of our food production by putting in place limited price and production controls for American-produced goods.
The hand of the market is not completely removed: producers still want to be as efficient as possible. The cost of food has gone down over time. And inefficient producers still go bankrupt.
Is this a good model? I have no idea. It certainly has drawbacks. (Ex: we subsidize too much corn and wheat.) But the US can feed itself without China or OPEC, so that's nice.
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#69Again severe failure on the govt’s part. Their inaction in when it was needed the most led to all these circumstances that makes it ripe for situations like these. As the number of infections spread and economic situation get worse these kind of things will get really really bad. Once the second and third order effects kick in it’s going to be a catastrophe. And our leaders answer to all of this is to give $1200 chec…
> Again severe failure on the govt’s part.
Just imagine how bad it would be if we turned industry over to the government to run, too.
Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many zeroes are you talking about?
Not zeros, but time.
What I'm getting at is that if you're talking tens of thousands of dollars for an order there's a far greater number of people who can put an advance towards that than if you're talking hundreds of thousands or millions per order.
Hospitals (public and private) in the Bay Area are publicly talking about sourcing PPE from non-medical vendors (e.g. construction companies) and nurses are protesting in front of hospitals. Seattle area hospitals are making their own. All of which is to say I think that procurement guidelines will be dramatically relaxed.
If you can ballpark it I'll ask around.