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Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

nytimes.com

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Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#131

Post by pbourke »

WalterBright wrote: post #113
pbourke wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would private industry have won WW2 on its own, or put humans on the moon? That’s the level of commitment and organization that is now required. Private industry is great at many things, but sacrificing profit for a shared goal is not one of them.

The US in WW2 was not a planned economy. The government put out contracts, and private capitalist companies delivered the goods. The government did not run industry. Capitalism worked so well the US was able to fight the war in two theaters while also supplying the other Allied nations. The Axis powers got simply overwhelmed by what American capitalism produced. > or put humans on the moon? In the 1960s, nope. The Ap…

Nobody is claiming that the government should run the factories directly. They should have showed up in early February at the ventilator and PPE factory doors with blank checks to ensure that output is ramped up to 11 immediately.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#132

Post by mindslight »

thymolu wrote: post #117
mindslight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd call myself a libertarian. I've gone through phases of many different flavors, but ultimately all united by a general belief that people should be free to make choices for themselves, and ultimately know themselves better than a centralized government. Having said that, there is a huge blindspot of this philosophy with regards to public health. So much so, that when public health officials do their job, we can co…

I'm of the libertarian persuasion too, but I'm really more of what I might refer to as a competitivist, that the government ideally increases competitive exchange of goods services and ideas. Sometimes this means more government services, sometimes less. Regulation is also different from service or resource provision. In a lot of ways, this crisis was worsened by overregulation. The FDA and CDC to some extent contrib…

It's true that the government was a net negative here. But in an alternative timeline with the same agencies, international travelers were examined, possibly quarantined, tested, and contact traced when it mattered. The red tape took just as long to get through, but started earlier, such that mass tests were available when community spread was a concern. And there wasn't an official narrative telling everyone to just ignore the problem.

I hate to say it, but getting a government that is worse than nothing is the outcome of the "drown it in the bathtub" philosophy. It's a direct result of a lack of belief in institutions. I'm all for cutting government bloat, but it has to be targeted at middle management, corporate welfare and outright citizen-hostile programs (NSA, DEA, TSA, CIA, ATF) rather than kneecapping public services. Yet when politicians get elected on a promise of downsizing, they go after the soft targets rather than actually disrupting the status quo.

As for healthcare itself, tomes have been written about that. I think regulating providers to have to charge uniform prices to all payers, at time of service, would go a long way. You don't go to the grocery store and pay at the checkout, only to receive a bill for the cashier's time three months later. Not that this would have solved our current shortage, but it certainly would have made people less scared to seek medical help for possible covid.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#133

Post by cameldrv »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #74
systemvoltage wrote: post #39

Let 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…

Strategic stockpiles seem much more cost effective than autarky.

You can't stockpile everything you could need for every potential crisis. At an individual level, think of extreme preppers that have huge tanks full of water, years of storable food, an arsenal of guns, etc. This only covers a small set of scenarios, but the cost is unaffordable on a national scale.

What makes a country resilient is not stockpiles, although those help, but the ability to quickly switch production to whatever is needed in the moment. Flexible production capacity trumps stockpiles, because you don't have to decide in advance what the crisis will be.

Unfortunately all of the flexible production is now in a country that's accusing the U.S. of deploying SARS-CoV2 as a bioweapon over Wuhan.

I thought before that it was someone eating a bat, but the hard propaganda push is making me suspect something more sinister that the Chinese are afraid will come out eventually, and they want to muddy the waters before it does.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#134

Post by ebrenes »

outlace wrote: post #9

There 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…

I'm honestly very conflicted now that you mention this. Yesterday some friends hit me up to donate to a gofundme page to support getting masks for a hospital a friend works at. It's a state university hospital with hundreds of millions in endowment in a red state.

It's easy to become jaded and cynical, but I'm beginning to believe this is the wake up call a lot of people need and anything less than an unmitigated disaster will be converted into a win to all these science denying, public health de-funding radicals running some governments.

It's probably the stress, anxiety and anger at the impotence caused by all this, but I can't help but feel a desire to lash out those people who have made things worse.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#135

Post by WalterBright »

pbourke wrote: post #131
WalterBright wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US in WW2 was not a planned economy. The government put out contracts, and private capitalist companies delivered the goods. The government did not run industry. Capitalism worked so well the US was able to fight the war in two theaters while also supplying the other Allied nations. The Axis powers got simply overwhelmed by what American capitalism produced. > or put humans on the moon? In the 1960s, nope. The Ap…

Nobody is claiming that the government should run the factories directly. They should have showed up in early February at the ventilator and PPE factory doors with blank checks to ensure that output is ramped up to 11 immediately.

I was replying to "sacrificing profit for a shared goal", which means the government runs it directly.

Writing a check to the company is very different.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#136

Post by patrec »

joe_the_user wrote: post #57

The inability to just requisition, demand resource, mobilize people and so-forth, is breathtaking here. The start of WWII saw the quick re-purposing of industries for the war effort. Today, it seems an inability to see what's necessary and get it to people is disturbing. The situation is effectively a war and one that's being fought very quickly. I could brainstorm and mention the "fast fashion" is renown for creatin…

I still can't believe that no western country is even capable of creating freaking face masks at scale (and no, doesn't need to be N95).

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#137

Post by saurik »

m3nu wrote: post #37

I do China sourcing and have decent access to 3-ply surgical masks and limited access to N95 masks. It's really hard to sell either of those to government bodies, even near cost. Already talked to the Red Cross, wholesale pharmacies and different ministries. They generally insist on payment on delivery, which we can't do for larger orders, as factories sell to whoever has the cash at the factory gate. Some also want…

You might not see this anymore, but in the hope: I'm saurik@saurik.com and am an elected government official in Southern California (in the United States) working with a nearby regional government, and have just learned that we are also interested in surgical masks (I had previously thought we were only interested in N95 masks). Are you also interested in shipping to the US?

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#138

Post by cycrutchfield »

ethbro wrote: post #98
cycrutchfield wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strategic stockpiles seem much more cost effective than autarky.

Are they? Meaningful quantities of all critical industrial goods would be incredibly inefficient. Sum({Some percentage of total use / year} * {Storage costs}) over {All strategic materials} And remember, all strategic materials would have to extend to things like non-woven fabric to be useful here.

Now do the sum for the protectionist measures that make domestic manufacturing actually viable.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#139

Post by cycrutchfield »

cameldrv wrote: post #133
cycrutchfield wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strategic stockpiles seem much more cost effective than autarky.

You can't stockpile everything you could need for every potential crisis. At an individual level, think of extreme preppers that have huge tanks full of water, years of storable food, an arsenal of guns, etc. This only covers a small set of scenarios, but the cost is unaffordable on a national scale. What makes a country resilient is not stockpiles, although those help, but the ability to quickly switch production to…

That sounds like more of an argument for ensuring that your supply chain is spread among your allies rather than your enemies.

Re: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

#140

Post by [deleted] »

baddox wrote: post #28
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again severe failure on the govt’s part. If you live in a democracy, then you are part of the government. You can't just blame other people for this.

That’s ridiculous. An average citizen cannot vote more medical supplies into existence no matter how hard they vote.

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