5 ms·

You're absolutely right. But does it really matter ? A lot more ventilator are going to be needed, not in % but in hard cold real absolute number. Isn't that m

• arcticbull 7y ago
  A lot of ventilators and more importantly people to administer them. This project is not providing a ventilator, and it's not providing people the special training required to administer them. If we need ventilators, we can have ventilator companies produce them using emergency powers every developed country has.
  • ldng 7y ago
    Well, not everybody is The First World and have ventilators plants in their border. But some place will love to have access to free and unencumbered blueprints to be able to do something locally with what they have at hand ? But you are also right that people are needed to administer those. No doubt about that. As is also true a person can administer several of those machines. And, just because something tries to address A only (and not B and C), does not mean we should not do it because B and C. Separate issues. Beside, to train people, you need spares to train on.
• chrisseaton 7y ago
  > But does it really matter ? Yes - I think we should challenge misleading information wherever we see it in this situation. Fighting panic is part of the problem and bad numbers cause panic. I mean, if we don't really care that the numbers aren't accurate because it's more important to emphasise why the project is important, we might as well go all the way and say 99% of people need a ventilator and really sell the project. There was a news report recently implying a 50/50 survival rate, due to this same kind of assuming everyone realises that you're talking about some group that's already in a bad way, but not actually saying that in the text.
  • senordevnyc 7y ago
    Actually, the biggest problem for a very long time has been people downplaying the risks and dangers of this pandemic, questioning the numbers, wondering whether it’s really that bad, and castigating any amount of preparation as “panic”, a word which has become meaningless in its overuse.
    • chrisseaton 7y ago
      But we know we're creating more artificial problems for ourselves! There was no actual food supply issue. But people have panicked due to unchecked bad information and now we do have a real food supply issue, at the very worst time to have one! Maybe if someone had said to people 'hang on that's not quite right there's plenty of food being supplied' we'd have one less problem.
      • gpm 7y ago
        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 people are infected), or just having shelves in stores be slightly bare, seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. There are some questionable cases, like people hording years worth of toilet paper (which can cause real temporary shortages and actually significantly inconvenience people), but everyone stockpiling a months worth of food seems like a good thing.
        • chrisseaton 7y ago
          > 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.
• Brakenshire 7y ago
  The Imperial study estimated a need for 100k ventilator intensive care beds at peak in the UK, currently there are 5k beds, and they’ve managed to find another 5k ventilators using spares and old models. The government is planning on using ventilator technicians (usually 1 per bed) to manage many beds, with newly trained junior staff managing each bed. So assuming no treatment breakthrough they will need something on the order of a ten fold increase in ventilators and a 20 fold increase in staff numbers, on current trajectories within a month or two, and with full suppression maybe in the Autumn.
• joe_the_user 7y ago
  No, he's wrong and you're wrong. There's no evidence supporting the theory that large numbers of asymptomatic people offset the figure of 20% of patient being severe cases. Hospitalizations and death skyrocket in Covids infected areas, we know what this thing looks like at scale. Plus Who report, pattern of infection, China and Korea eliminated visible cases and haven't seen many more etc.