Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Ventilator Project

opensourceventilator.ie

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 145 posts

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#61

Post by gpm »

chrisseaton wrote: post #59
gpm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this idea that "panic buying" is necessarily bad. We are moving goods from communal locations to people's homes. We aren't destroying goods. Once/if the virus does arrive in a large volume at the location we would greatly rather that people stayed at home and ate food they had stockpiled than that they then went to the grocery store. Dealing with shipping extra products now (while a very small fraction of…

> I don't get this idea that "panic buying" is necessarily bad. We are moving goods from communal locations to people's homes. Not to everyone's homes. For example: old people who can't rush to the shops and elbow their way through the queue may get nothing.

I'm not talking about behavior that involves any form of physical violence or physically moving quickly. Such behavior is almost certainly inappropriate under any and all circumstances. Humans suck so I guess I can assume that it has happened somewhere, but that's not the behavior I've been observing.

I am talking about buying x times as much as you usually do when you go grocery shopping to build up a stockpile, including a larger supply of food that you can store for a long period of time (canned/frozen/dry goods).

Edit: And yes, it doesn't include everyone's homes. In particular it doesn't include the homes of people who didn't do this. Unless the store is literally bare it does still help those people though, because it means there are less people in the store who might transmit the virus to them.

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#62

Post by lifeisstillgood »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #51
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-invasive alternatives to "breathing for someone whose lung function has fallen below life-sustaining levels" sounds like [deadly] bullshit. I'm not sure coughing in the shower is going to do it for someone about to die from hypoxemia?

Cystic fibrosis accounts for about a third of all adult lung transplants in the US and about half of all pediatric lung transplants. At the time that I was diagnosed with a relatively mild form of it, life expectancy in the US was 36. So I have a quite serious lung condition and I used to own and use (and sterilize at home) various forms of mechanical intervention. I no longer use mechanical intervention, in part bec…

Consider this an anti-lump. Stored in the back of my mind is a shower based all-other-things-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket option. Thank you.

Keep sharing - medical best practise moves onward as well. Perhaps your experience is only effective for you, perhaps it's a viable alternative for millions. We'll science the shit out of it in the next few months no matter what :-)

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#63

Post by DoreenMichele »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #60
DoreenMichele wrote: post #16

I made some remarks about ventilator alternatives here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22624959 To pull out some pertinent details: Ventilators for covid19 seem to be mostly for inflammation and fluid in the lungs (aka pneumonia), not lung or chest paralysis. If you need a ventilator due to inflammation or fluid build up, you can do other things to address those issues. If you are doing home care for serious lu…

I get bronchitis once or twice a year. The method by which I clear it is to hang upside down until the s * just comes out of me by coughing as hard as I can. That sounds awfully similar.

Some random shower thoughts, having just returned myself from doing lung clearance, something I've been doing a lot since we cleaned up the mold issue we had:

If you think doing lung clearance might cause actual vomiting as well, don't do it in the shower.

Instead: Get naked, stand over your toilet and cough into the toilet. Then shower before getting dressed again.

Don't skip showering. Store your clothes away from where you will be coughing/puking so they don't get blow back.

Don't assume once a day is sufficient. Doing lung clearance multiple times a day is not unreasonable during a life-threatening health crisis.

If you can't bring it up, drink something and eat something salty. This will help you cough it up.

If you roll over and it provoked a coughing fit, you probably have fluid sloshing around in your lungs. It's a good idea to attempt lung clearance at that time.

It's more or less free (though it could drive your water bill up). It just takes a few minutes. The only known side effect is breathing easier.

Okay, okay. I sometimes get dry skin from showering 500 million times. It's less annoying than not being able to breathe.

Try to not fall in the shower though. Getting bruised up would not be a good thing.

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#64

Post by arcticbull »

nexuist wrote: post #52
dsl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just treat it as harmless hobbyism Any other time, yes. In a time of widespread panic? Dangerous. People are going to try to build and use these at home in an act of desperation to "do something", and end up killing their loved ones.

Think back to Wuhan. Imagine the hospitals have closed their doors because they are already backed up. Your grandparent is dying in the room next door because no doctor is available to treat them. Who the hell cares if you build a ventilator and try it then? They're going to die anyways. You are doing nothing except increasing their chance of survival by acting instead of waiting. Should you use this while hospital b…

Doing something may well be worse than doing nothing.

Concrete example: you get impaled by something. Do you: (a) do absolutely nothing and leave it in, and seek help or (b) rip it out as you see in movies because doing something is better than doing nothing.

(b) will kill you and (a) will save your life.

By doing something you have no business doing, no understanding of the mechanics and consequences you may will make it worse.

If everyone in Wuhan hooked up their loved ones to leaf blowers, the death rate probably would have been massively higher.

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#65

Post by arcticbull »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #50
arcticbull wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, but we absolutely do know for an absolute fact that -- it is not true 15-20% of people with nCoV-19 need a ventilator. We don't know what the number is but we 100% with absolute certainty know it is not 15-20%. If we acquiesce to 70% of the US getting nCoV-19 as the epidemiologists are suggesting that would require 50 million ventilators. There are about 70,000 in the US. So we'd need almost 1000X as many venti…

Well in China they seem to have forced everyone to stay home? The UK appears to have decided allowing 500,000 of us to die was a bad idea and we're now on "lockdown". At least everyone is _advised_ to socially distance, because - it seems - then businesses can still fire people for not turning up to work, and insurers can avoid paying out ("you chose to stop the event, you weren't obliged to"). I'm not sure we can te…

> Well in China they seem to have forced everyone to stay home?

Well, it's China.

> The UK appears to have decided allowing 500,000 of us to die was a bad idea and we're now on "lockdown".

500,000 people dying wasn't going to happen. Korea's death rate is closer to 0.4%, almost entirely the older folks who were to be quarantined at home during this process anyways. Korea's death rate for under-40's is 0-0.1%, so at worst, ignoring that vulnerable folks in those demographics would also be quarantined, the death toll would less than 50K -- probably much, much less, and not drastically out of line with a bad flu year.

> I'm not sure we can tell what the rates are, what's the testing false positive rate? UK gave up testing a while back (except emergency hospital admissions).

Supportive treatment is the only thing you can do anyways. Beyond that PCR tests will only tell you if you currently actively have the disease not if you had it before and recovered. We need antibody tests for that.

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#67

Post by whatshisface »

arcticbull wrote: post #39
whatshisface wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're suggesting they'd just be trying to kill everyone instead of trying to treat them. Triage isn't "trying to kill," it's choosing who gets to benefit from limited medical resources.

It's not triage if the device you have is worthless. It's not a medical resource if it's not fit for purpose or if the people using it aren't trained.

How do you know that none of these open design devices are fit for purpose? There are an awful lot of them, and the people behind this one have a lot of credentials...

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#68

Post by mikeInAlaska »

Has anyone looked at Cuirass ventilators? The (seemingly only) manufacturer says they are great for clearing lungs and breathing. They even seem to indicate them for use with Covid. They are basically iron lungs revamped. They look easier to amateur build than invasive ventilators and with no intubation, anyone could apply one.

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#69

Post by Gatsky »

I am 90% sure there will be a useful antiviral therapy available soon, whether it is remdesivir, favipiravir or even chloroquine. This will change the game in humanity's favour. Antivirals are also the only solution which can actually scale to the problem, unlike these ventilator projects or even vaccines (at least not for a very long time, bear in mind that under ideal conditions the supply of seasonal flu vaccines is often dicey). The first use for antivirals will be to reduce the number of patients with severe infection requiring ventilatory support.

Making these antivirals as useful as possible is of great importance, and that means going all in on mass producing a quick and reliable and broadly applicable diagnostic test.

I would much rather see open source projects targeting diagnostic tests or manufacturing nasopharyngeal swabs. Admittedly, this is much harder to achieve for people not involved in life science research or without access to virological specimens.

Re: Open Source Ventilator Project

#70

Post by grogenaut »

AstralStorm wrote: post #27
DoreenMichele wrote: post #16

I made some remarks about ventilator alternatives here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22624959 To pull out some pertinent details: Ventilators for covid19 seem to be mostly for inflammation and fluid in the lungs (aka pneumonia), not lung or chest paralysis. If you need a ventilator due to inflammation or fluid build up, you can do other things to address those issues. If you are doing home care for serious lu…

Please don't be silly. You cannot physically cough hard enough with dropped O2 sats like that, and even strong healthy people will be unable to fully evacuate matter from lungs, especially biofilms. Next time you propose an alternative, provide actual data supporting it. As a test, start doing it at say peak of a 2200 meter mountain. (That would be 90% with no acclimation.) See how far you can go. Sleeping positions…

What's the supply of O2 concentrators like then?
Post reply on HN