Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer

Post by threatofrain » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

mapgrep wrote: post #125

peteretep wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I am not an expert here but it seems dangerous to assume as you do that the baseline of “correct number of ventilators” is the UK number. They could be... -Under provisioning for surges (not even Covid, even just a sudden emergency of another sort, a bad flu season, big accident, terror event, whatever) -Going longer between maintenance intervals than is recommended -Delaying ICU admission longer than is strictly rec…

Post by riffraff » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #75

dillonmckay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is the rush to acquire PPE, rules be damned, a decent amount of counterfeit masks will make it into circulation, and will provide a false sense of security.

I bet someone could develop a simple mask test everyone could even do at home. (Let’s present solutions, HN. Don’t just tell people things won’t work.)

Post by hejdirk » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #2

It 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.

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #94

freeflight wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Post by kmlx » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #51

peteretep wrote: post #45

Earlier 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…

There's some definitional problems as well. Consider that in the last few weeks the NHS doubled its ICU capacity. The term "ICU bed" conjures up images of something surrounded by über-complex equipment but it can mean other things, which is why it seems able to flex so fast. As far as I can tell, so far in this pandemic, there haven't been any stats that can be totally trusted or compared between nations - on anythin…