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If GM makes 10,000 ventilators and they all turn out defective, that could be worse then never making the ventilators at all.

neuronic 7y ago
Correct, this is also why we can skip animal trials for vaccine development but not human trials. A vaccine that is supposed to be deployed across the board will affect many millions of people and if even a minuscule issue exists we may cause way more harm than good! The situation is dire and we need fast countermeasures but regulations exist for a reason. This is about health & safety after all.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  A vaccine is given to healthy people. A drug that is given to a small number of people that are so sick that they will die within days and there is no other cure, has different safety requirements from a vaccine that is given to a huge number of people that are healthy. In the vaccine case, even a relatively rare (1/10000) side effect might mean that the vaccine is worse than the cure. Not so with the treatment of dying people. Safety wise, using untested equipment is the same as the drug for dying people scenario, not the vaccine scenario. A similar example is this: in normal circumstances these devices are operated by ICU doctors. In a time of crisis you can already see this delegated to doctors that have never used a ventilator, and only given a brief introduction or even just a pamphlet describing it. I suspect that within the next months there will be places where recently trained nurses perform the duties of ICU doctors. And laid off hotell staff perform nursing duties. > regulations exist for a reason. This is about health & safety after all. They do, but most regulations are surprisingly flexible in a crisis. E.g. already the rest time requirements for truck drivers are lifted in many countries to keep supply lines. In the military (where a crisis is planned for) there are two different sets of safety requirements, with a stricter one that only applies in peacetime (e.g. max speeds, minimum distances bewteeen vehicles, requirements to use ear protection and pretty much every single safety requirement there is)
alkonaut 7y ago
GM won't make ventilators. They'll make plastic parts, hoses, valves etc. It's not that GM couldn't pivot to building something else, but they can't do that within weeks. They can probably start churning out metal or plastic parts whose speciifcations can be verified by the ventilator manufacturer before they are assembled into one of their ventilators. I'm hoping that what they are asking car manufacturers to do is allow the medical industry to use their equipment (e.g. plastic molding equipment) to supply parts that either can't be sourced at all because of the crisis, or can't be supplied in the volumes needed.

neuronic 7y ago

Correct, this is also why we can skip animal trials for vaccine development but not human trials. A vaccine that is supposed to be deployed across the board will affect many millions of people and if even a minuscule issue exists we may cause way more harm than good! The situation is dire and we need fast countermeasures but regulations exist for a reason. This is about health & safety after all.

alkonaut 7y ago
A vaccine is given to healthy people. A drug that is given to a small number of people that are so sick that they will die within days and there is no other cure, has different safety requirements from a vaccine that is given to a huge number of people that are healthy. In the vaccine case, even a relatively rare (1/10000) side effect might mean that the vaccine is worse than the cure. Not so with the treatment of dying people. Safety wise, using untested equipment is the same as the drug for dying people scenario, not the vaccine scenario. A similar example is this: in normal circumstances these devices are operated by ICU doctors. In a time of crisis you can already see this delegated to doctors that have never used a ventilator, and only given a brief introduction or even just a pamphlet describing it. I suspect that within the next months there will be places where recently trained nurses perform the duties of ICU doctors. And laid off hotell staff perform nursing duties. > regulations exist for a reason. This is about health & safety after all. They do, but most regulations are surprisingly flexible in a crisis. E.g. already the rest time requirements for truck drivers are lifted in many countries to keep supply lines. In the military (where a crisis is planned for) there are two different sets of safety requirements, with a stricter one that only applies in peacetime (e.g. max speeds, minimum distances bewteeen vehicles, requirements to use ear protection and pretty much every single safety requirement there is)

alkonaut 7y ago

GM won't make ventilators. They'll make plastic parts, hoses, valves etc. It's not that GM couldn't pivot to building something else, but they can't do that within weeks. They can probably start churning out metal or plastic parts whose speciifcations can be verified by the ventilator manufacturer before they are assembled into one of their ventilators. I'm hoping that what they are asking car manufacturers to do is allow the medical industry to use their equipment (e.g. plastic molding equipment) to supply parts that either can't be sourced at all because of the crisis, or can't be supplied in the volumes needed.