Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany is at 80% though. So not that much difference.
That’s 4x the spare capacity in the system.
Right? It’s a bafflingly huge number, and almost everything I’ve seen mentioned so far would support 2x tops.
Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
91–100 of 182 posts
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insufficient by what measure? You're comparing against - it appears - the second highest spender in the world. There have been no cuts in NHS service. Sometimes I think I need to assign this to a keyboard macro because it's such a frequently repeated myth. The NHS has more funding now than it's ever had, it has been explicitly protected from budget reductions when every other government department has seen massive re…
NHS spending has not dropped, but it has not grown at the appropriate rate. There are various discussions that we could have about nursing numbers and junior doctor hours, but instead I'd like to provide one hard data point: Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge (technically Addenbrookes Hospital Trust, comprised of several hospitals on one site) is the largest hospital in the UK. For the tax year 2019/2020, the availab…
Yeah, let's look at where hospital money goes:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hospital-bosses-face-1...
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve wondered about this for a little while. Why does Germany have five times as many ICU beds than England? Until now, I’ve never heard a suggestion that England had fewer ICU beds than it needed generally, and assuming England and Germany use beds at the same general capacity, why on earth is Germany running five times more beds that it generally needs? (please don’t answer “for a case like this” unless you have so…
Note that the UK spends a lot less (per capita) on healthcare than Germany: (£2,989 vs £4,432 in 2017), and that funding for healthcare has generally be considered to be insufficient over at least the last 10 years in the UK, leading to cuts in service. This may account for at least some of the difference. Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
> Note that the UK spends a lot less (per capita) on healthcare than Germany: (£2,989 vs £4,432 in 2017)
If Germany have provisioned 5 times more ICU beds than they generally need, I can see why their costs might be higher
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve wondered about this for a little while. Why does Germany have five times as many ICU beds than England? Until now, I’ve never heard a suggestion that England had fewer ICU beds than it needed generally, and assuming England and Germany use beds at the same general capacity, why on earth is Germany running five times more beds that it generally needs? (please don’t answer “for a case like this” unless you have so…
> why on earth is Germany running five times more beds that it generally needs? I feel like that question is asked the wrong way around because you are assuming England has "exactly enough", that's how you end up with Germany supposedly "running five times more beds than it needs". But there's good reason to believe England has not enough ICU beds, even outside of a pandemic, the result of years of austerity cuts to…
> he UK right now sits at 11 deaths per 1m population, Germany at 5, and that's with Germany having tens of thousands of more cases [3].
The UK has done around 110k tests, Germany more than 400k. Don't confuse positive test results with actual infections. If the UK tested more, it'd very likely have more "cases".
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#95Bit of an aside, but Dräger is a fascinating company. Aside from their core medical devices, serious scuba divers know them for their rebreathers, which collect, scrub and reuse the air you breathe, instead of just venting it out like typical scuba regulators. Rebreathers are notoriously expensive, fiddly and dangerous, because there are all sorts of ways things can go wrong if the gas mix isn't just right, but Dräger's kit is the gold standard.
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep reading beyond the 1st sentence, he's describing bureaucracy problems, not transport problems.
Maybe read the last 2 sentences of my comment.
Both are kind of true. The air freight / train / sea freight part would ve easy enough to solve. Getting the masks distributed locally is already a little bit trickier,but I am working on something right now. Basically a regional hub, supplied by air train or sea, and a couple of Kanban loops to local distribution centers (hospitals, practices, whatever).
Maybe I can convince someone to give it a try. If not, I'll just go back building my company as planned. Would still suck so, to have look at the mess from the sidelines.
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#97Some key statements: "Dräger: In Europe, the number of intensive-care beds per capita is very unequally distributed. In Italy, it is three times lower than here. In England, five times lower. The challenge in England will be greater than in Spain. And the situation in the U.S. is very alarming. The reporting system there is also underdeveloped."
Let's add some context we can all get behind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_health_consumer_index
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#98It would be nice if we could at least provide everybody with simple surgical masks. It would surely help flatten the curve a lot if we could make masks in public mandatory. As far as I understand it those are basically just paper and a nose clip. They should be very simple to mass manufacture.
Or you could just use a scarf/cloth mask for nearly the same effect without tapping into actual medical supplies.
People who are handy with a sewing machine can even make pretty decent ones themselves [0]
[0] https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-...
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#99Some key statements: "Dräger: In Europe, the number of intensive-care beds per capita is very unequally distributed. In Italy, it is three times lower than here. In England, five times lower. The challenge in England will be greater than in Spain. And the situation in the U.S. is very alarming. The reporting system there is also underdeveloped."
The US has the most ICU beds per capita among all countries. Germany is a close second.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-co...
Re: Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't surprise me culturally. I lived in Germany for a couple of years, and the deference to "rules that matter" was completely different than my US experience. Even for trivial stuff like waiting in line/queues. The Germans were much more literal in following the rules, versus my US and UK peers.
Which funnily contradicts my experience as a German in the US (interesting how cultural perception differs). I've been told in very harsh words to go in line in the US several times, once in a line for the IKEA ferry to Manhattan where I was threatened to be left behind if I do not go to the back of the line. Once in the Metropolitan museum in NYC when I skipped the ropes of an empty queue and was told to go back and…
This is something I love about living in germany, actually. In the UK (where I was brought up) you're very used to the kind of absurd situations that develop from common sense not being applied to rules. If you talk to somebody in a position of authority, you absolutely expect them to pick the least reasonable, least constructive application of any rule they have at their disposal to ruin your day.
I don't know why this is so different in Germany. I've more often observed the inverse - where people (mostly well-dressed middle-aged men, for whatever reason) are extremely rude and condescending towards secretaries, ticket collectors, etc.