111–119 of 119 posts
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Everything else, yes, but climate change? I can't imagine how climate change can significantly affect probability of next pandemic.
Displaced people? Displaced animal populations?
What about a "Both Respirator"? [1] In the 1930s polio epidemic there was a shortage of "iron lung" respirators, which were expensive to produce. Edward Both invented a plywood version, which was cheap and easy to produce. A re-purposed car factory then churned them out by the thousand. Is a negative pressure ventilator relevant for COVID-19 treatment? (Any knowledgeable medicos here who can offer a critique?) If so,…
Med student here - so I know some of the theory only. The most relevant "law" is Fick's Law of Diffusion ( https://d2jmvrsizmvf4x.cloudfront.net/CTU792sKR2evT2ezizQp_f... ). Doctors can increase diffusion by increasing the partial pressure of oxygen. In a diffuse infection a patient begins to lose both lung area (due to shunting) and the thickness of the diffusion barrier increases (due to inflammation). To help over…
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This is a really off the wall idea that might actually work. Can anybody get this idea some lift? Definitely a way for Boeing to get some desperately needed good PR.
I'll ping my friend who's been at Boeing for 25 years about it in the morning. Anyone know an MD who could review the idea?
Novel thought...
Theoretically, yes. The Environmental Control Systems on all our commercial airplanes positively charge the airflow at a nominal Delta P of 9.8 psi and have HEPA filtration down to 10µm, but at $100M+ per 737 MAX, delivery customers highly frowning upon such a practice and not being able to deliver them as a "New" airplanes after contamination, highly unlikely.
The A380 fleet is starting to retire prematurely only after 10 short years of service due to lack of profitability and demand due to COVID-19. Those huge retired Behemoths could serve very well as a quarantine base in remote locations.
Can a sleep apnea machine (cpap, bipap) help if you get it and run into problems?
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I think that algorithms/ML people will have something to offer here. This essentially changes triage into a hard optimization problem. IANAD, but it's not just a problem of matching people in the current pool. You also have to plan for incoming patients. Having the parameters of the ventilator not perfectly match the patient likely affects the probability of survival in a smooth way (with in some bounds). So now the…
okay so how long does it take to certify that and how different is it going to be compared to just have General Motors produce under license on existing designs
Supply chains take a long time to spin up.
Why not both?
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> but are they a golden ticket to good health No, building a ventilator is like building an engine because you need to go to the store - you're missing so much of the solution to the problem. I've also posted before [1] on why they are a terrible idea to waste time on "designing". That said, ventilators I believe are already a solved problem for COVID. We have tens of thousands in the strategic stockpile, and product…
For the US, the potential needs is in the millions and the current ventilator count is 100,000 (plus or minus tens of thousands). I think we probably agree that industrial production is the way forward, but the numbers are not particularly comfortable.
There are only 96,596 ICU hospital beds in the United States according to the AHA. As I said, ventilators are already solved to the point that something else is the bottleneck.
Is it possible to kill the virus inside the body, the same way we kill it outside? For example, if one could hypothetically spray alcohol everywhere inside someone's lungs, would that kill the infection? If so, could a liquid/gas mixture be developed to deliver the right virus-killer substance directly to the lungs? Does anyone here know about PFCs-breathing treatments?[0] 0: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/201…
Thank you to the people that took the time to answer the question and explain why these ideas are not currently feasible.
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I'll ping my friend who's been at Boeing for 25 years about it in the morning. Anyone know an MD who could review the idea?
Hello! I'm just a medical student myself, but here's my take on this: Your lungs operate on the principle of differential pressure. During normal breathing, hen the pressure inside your lungs becomes less than that of the surrounding atmosphere, air rushes in to normalize and fill it until they are again equal pressures. Gradually increasing or decreasing the pressure of the atmosphere around you (as on a plane or wh…
Any changes you could think of that would make it work?
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> are they a golden ticket to good health ? I don't think anyone views them quite as starkly as that.
I think many people do as that is why there is so much focus on them.