Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where can I read more about those sabotage attempts?
"US pressures countries to reject Cuban aid during coronavirus pandemic" https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-pressures-count...
Thanks.
The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
151–160 of 355 posts
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying "zero training". I'm suggesting the minimum training necessary to run a ventilator. That way doctors or nurses could simply hand off care to ventilator-operators who could contact the doctor or nurses if things got out of control. This wouldn't be as high quality care as people would usually get, but hopefully it would be better than nothing. Regarding whether doctors would want undertrained help - tha…
Also vets could help out if necessary, as they are trained to use ventilators.
...and in the UK we've already seen calls to use the vents that vets have.
https://www.vettimes.co.uk/news/veterinary-sector-primed-to-...
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
This speaks volumes about the cronyist regulatory captured monopoly that the AMA has been able to install over the past hundred years.
Ah yes, you surely know better than the trained professionals about how to best run an ICU. Just because you can call yourself a software engineer with little more than a high school diploma doesn’t mean that the same rules apply for doctors.
Intubation is a delicate procedure, error prone and risky for the person performing the procedure because a lot of stuff gets blown back at you if it doesn't work well the first time around. It's one of the major reasons so many healthcare professionals end up infected, and given that these are the worst patients and their viral loads are very high that risk is even higher than it might seem.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If corebit happens to be an Operations Research specialist then it is reasonably likely that they would be better at running an ICU than a typical professional medical worker. Why do people on HN consistently presume that they somehow know better than the experts? It’s distressing to me that anybody can say something like this with a straight face.
Obviously because being an ICU doctor isn't something hard like writing code. Fewer buttons on a ventilator! /s But seriously, the amount of people on here trivializing modern medicine isn't helping matters. Granted, neither is business-as-usual, but a 30-day "ventilator boot camp" for untrained professionals is going to kill far more people than it helps. And a poor allocation of resources during a time of scarcity.
> But seriously, the amount of people on here trivializing modern medicine isn't helping matters.
It's absolutely incredible. But that's exactly the kind of attitude that 'move fast and break things' fosters.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you repeat the same task 20 times a day you rapidly become an expert at it. If all the patients have exactly the same condition I would assume that the staff would quickly upskill to treat that condition.
Typical for tech oriented people to look at it this way. Patients with the same condition are still meatware and each has the capacity to develop their own variation on a large number of themes all of which require adaptations in treatment regime and sometimes very rapid intervention lest you lose a patient. Your assumption doesn't hold.
I assume OP is referring to conditions during a pandemic. There have been numerous reports out of Italy about how they are operating under a wartime triage system - presumably under these conditions the response is more focused on repetition of the same process rather than unique personalised care.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you repeat the same task 20 times a day you rapidly become an expert at it. If all the patients have exactly the same condition I would assume that the staff would quickly upskill to treat that condition.
Typical for tech oriented people to look at it this way. Patients with the same condition are still meatware and each has the capacity to develop their own variation on a large number of themes all of which require adaptations in treatment regime and sometimes very rapid intervention lest you lose a patient. Your assumption doesn't hold.
It's not a choice between a doctor and a layman, though. It's a choice between a volunteer who's only trained in the very basics and watched a couple of intubations, and nobody at all.
How much training does someone need before they become a clear net positive for the patient?
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typical for tech oriented people to look at it this way. Patients with the same condition are still meatware and each has the capacity to develop their own variation on a large number of themes all of which require adaptations in treatment regime and sometimes very rapid intervention lest you lose a patient. Your assumption doesn't hold.
I assume OP is referring to conditions during a pandemic. There have been numerous reports out of Italy about how they are operating under a wartime triage system - presumably under these conditions the response is more focused on repetition of the same process rather than unique personalised care.
No, it's the fact that you need unique personalized care that makes it complex.
Triage is just to deal with limited resources, essentially it divides the applicants into 'walking', 'dead' and 'care', and the fewer resources you have the more people will get sorted into the 'dead' category even if they still have a pulse when you see them. The 'care' category will still get unique personalized care otherwise you might as well sort them into the 'dead' category on the spot.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#158I find it strange that all we hear about these days is the shortage of ventilators (okay, PPE too), as if it’s the only bottleneck. The reality is ventilators are useless without intensivists to operate them, and you need anesthesiologists and probably other skilled personnel too. I learned through a personal connection who was actually on the ground in Hubei (but not Wuhan) caring for serious but non-ICU patients th…
Saying it is easy to ramp up machinery implies that it actually is... while your point that human capital is more valuable than tools is correct, ask yourself why a sophisticated pump costs 10k$ and requires a medically trained person to operate it. There is a lot of money to be made by keeping these barriers in place, through legal, technical means and by limiting people’s access to “experts” that know what to do wi…
Yes, the only thing stopping us from 3D printing ventilators and hooking them up to patients are those evil “barriers” we call regulations.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typical for tech oriented people to look at it this way. Patients with the same condition are still meatware and each has the capacity to develop their own variation on a large number of themes all of which require adaptations in treatment regime and sometimes very rapid intervention lest you lose a patient. Your assumption doesn't hold.
It's not a choice between a doctor and a layman, though. It's a choice between a volunteer who's only trained in the very basics and watched a couple of intubations, and nobody at all. How much training does someone need before they become a clear net positive for the patient?
I rather had in mind a nurse who would step up but still know when to call the doctor when things look unusual.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question in a lot of ways is how many exponential doublings do we have to have before this situation switches in peoples' minds from a peace-time inconvenience to essentially real war. Right now, the death rate still isn't higher than a flu epidemic but just the number of known infections promises a lot worse and the potential doublings after that are terrifying. It seems like there's an endless dialogue of: A: H…
"The question in a lot of ways is how many exponential doublings do we have to have before this situation switches in peoples' minds from a peace-time inconvenience to essentially real war." The millions of people who would die in a worst-case scenario are mainly demographics that society is already used to neglecting: the elderly, the terminally ill, those with lifelong chronic illnesses where any infection could be…
Well, if the bulk of the population is left inconvenienced and unemployed for too long, I can imagine some ugly scenarios where the population demands, broadly speaking, that those demographics simply be triaged out of treatment so that they don't overwhelm the healthcare system for everyone else.
People imagining such triaging seem to think that a willingness to be appalling brutal means such brutality could be achieved with limited costs.
Italy's situation is far from the worst-case scenario. It's death rate is not that much higher than a seasonal flu, it's just the death-process that is far more messy.
Which is to say, let the infection rate get high enough and you'll have hospitals crowded with the young and healthy even if carry the old directly to the morgue.
Moreover, authorities shouting "all clear" in the midst of this dreck isn't going just summon a phalanx of consumers ready to go to restaurants, death chance or not.
In short, just because you're evil doesn't mean you aren't stupid too.