The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
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Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#2I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it.
However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally.
Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The government runs healthcare here in the UK. They have a responsibility for making sure there is supply of equipment available for us. This isn't some car pooling company that says "there's no cars available until next Wed", this is healthcare. And as for production, the government should have agreements in place with manufacturers to switch to infrastructure build out.
We've screwed up flood defences, energy, healthcare so far. Lets stop now.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#3I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally. Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The gover…
I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators.
It wouldn't necessarily have been trivial for another company to pick the design up and produce it, but it would have been possible.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#4I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally. Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The gover…
> Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it.
Exactly. Which means we should not be depending on governments to do it. This is exactly the sort of thing that private startup companies should be doing, without trying to involve the government's bloated and inefficient bureaucracy.
> even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally
For this particular crisis, yes. But not for the next one, if we start now.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#5I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally. Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The gover…
I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators. It wouldn't necessarily have been trivial for another company to pick the design up and produce it, but it would have been possible.
> I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators.
The big company that bought the small one would simply have claimed that the design was their intellectual property and nobody else could build it.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#6I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally. Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The gover…
Have you considered that maybe broken inefficiency is not necessarily a property of governments in general? The local optimum might be to avoid having the government do things, but the global optimum is to fix your government.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#7what is so complicated about ventilators? Serious question as I don’t know enough about this. I see a lot of DIY posts that are probably not 100% the same thing but are they even close?
This opens up a bigger question too, is there such a thing as a path for open source medical devices to be built and certified and deployed? Is there a company that supports something like this? I follow Scott hanselman, a Microsoft employee who’s diabetic, and there is a big movement within that community to build open source artificial pancrea, using insulin pumps and software and such. Is there a play like that for ventilators? And other critical medical devices?
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#8It’s ironic that Covidien was the name of the company that screwed up the ventilator supply.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#9what is so complicated about ventilators? Serious question as I don’t know enough about this. I see a lot of DIY posts that are probably not 100% the same thing but are they even close? This opens up a bigger question too, is there such a thing as a path for open source medical devices to be built and certified and deployed? Is there a company that supports something like this? I follow Scott hanselman, a Microsoft e…
There is a narrow range of pressure where you're not damaging the alveoli from underpressure, but not bursting the lungs from overpressure. You need a mechanical scalpel, not a butcher's knife.
Re: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators
#10I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally. Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The gover…
This story, if accurate, is simply an illustration of how low-regulation capitalism works. "Working as intended." Profit is the only motive, and thus as long as the company/investors profit, then it is a success.
The fact that national or global human well-being suffered is irrelevant (so long as we accept that capitalism (as currently implemented) is the right way).
Now, there's a strong likelihood that the government officials with the power to prevent the sale of the company, or alternately the power to prevent the cancelation of the contract, were lobbied (and financially supported in various ways counter to the benefit of the people those officials represent). Otherwise, it's hard to imagine the government just casually agreeing to abandon a project that was already demonstrated to be near success (and the outcome of which was already demonstrated to be important).