6 ms·

How exactly do you mandate companies produce something which they don't even have the parts to make? The problem is not manufacturing capacity or will, it's th

How exactly do you mandate companies produce something which they don't even have the parts to make? The problem is not manufacturing capacity or will, it's that supply chains for medical devices are global and those supply chains have been broken. Increasing production of something like ventilators purely domestically requires increasing (or building from scratch) production of the components, which requires new or re-tooling, sourcing of raw materials, etc. Yes, the current federal mismanagement of the whole crisis is awful, but even if everyone had acted quickly, there would still be shortages. Covid spreads faster than device production.

coliveira 7y ago
I can guarantee you that this country has the industrial capacity to produce any kind of parts, especially for a well known technology like ventilators. The fact is that they are not doing it because nobody alerted and told them to do so three months ago.
- freeopinion 7y ago
  I'm not convinced that it would have been reasonable to do so three months ago. Three months ago there were rumors that there was something brewing in some part of China most people had never heard of. I point this out to suggest that your expectation might be a little unfair. If such an order had gone out one month ago it would have been controversial. But if you want to say that the administration is a month behind in their reactions it would be more fair. You seem to have observed that a giant beauracracy is reacting weeks behind a crisis and this seems to upset you.
  - coliveira 7y ago
    > Three months ago there were rumors that there was something brewing in some part of China I disagree. Anyone paying attention knew, in the first weeks of January, that something very dangerous was happening. Moreover, we cannot equate the US government to a common person. They have the most expensive intelligence apparatus in the world. And we have an expensive government exactly to protect the population against real threats like this.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      Congress was even briefed as such. They then went and sold their stocks, while downplaying it to the rest of us. AOC is right, it's time to make stock trading flat-out illegal for members of congress. They hold index funds or nothing.
      - abraae 7y ago
        They could have dumped their index funds for cash for a huge profit.
      - extrapickles 7y ago
        They should also be restricted to buying/selling with a 1-2 quarter lag on the buy/sell order to prevent them from dumping the indexes when they learn of something that will move the entire market like the current situation.
  - thomk 7y ago
    3 months ago 5K people were infected in a single day in China. The current administration was completely trained on how to handle a pandemic right after the inauguration. Unfortunately most of those folks have been fired and 3 months ago we were distracted by yet another scandal this time ending in Impeachment. However 2 months ago this was the message from the White House: 'When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.' That un-fucking-believable 'head in the sand' moment happened at peak infection in China; 80K people infected. This administration isn't a month behind; they simply don't deal with things unless they are forced to. The US stockpiles ventilators for emergencies like this for a reason. Someone was asleep at the switch in our Federal Government and the reaction is to lie about how well they are doing and blame everyone else. I'm fed up, aren't you?
    - freeopinion 7y ago
      3 months ago the first four cases walked into a hospital in China. I don't want to defend the current US political powers. I'm highly discouraged about a lot of things. But it doesn't help to make unfair accusations based on bad facts. If your criticisms are based on fiction they get tossed out. Just rebase on truth and you might have some much more supportable criticism. There's plenty to legitimately criticize. When you drown out legitimate criticism with baseless criticism, the noise to signal suppresses real criticism. It is unclear whether this is intentional.
  - mulmen 7y ago
    That’s why we had people embedded in the health services in China. To get warnings on this kind of event far in advance.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    "The giant bureaucracy" isn't the problem, in itself. The current administration in the white house, however, is. A lot of factors came together, hampering the response. Trump has fired lots of experts, many others left for other reasons and Trump has problems hiring Replacements. He disbanded that office in the White House. On top of that he didn't take the issue seriously at all. I would say that in early January it wasn't yet clear this would become a serious respiratory pandemic. Maybe not even to US intelligence services or the Chinese government. But late January and early February it dawned on most people (including me).
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    EDIT: I am wrong and can't add. Jan 30th was two months ago. Leaving this here to remind me not to post on HN pre-coffee. > Three months ago there were rumors that there was something brewing in some part of China most people had never heard of. Three months ago was January 30th. The number of cases on that date was 7,711 and the number had been increasing at roughly 50% every day for WEEKS at that point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_in_November_2019_–_January_2020 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019–20_coro...
    - freeopinion 7y ago
      Three months ago was December 30. "On 29 December 2019, a hospital in Wuhan admitted four individuals with pneumonia and recognized that all four had worked in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which sells live poultry, aquatic products, and several kinds of wild animals to the public." http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e3c63ca9-dedb-4fb6-9c1c-d057adb77b57 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e3c63ca9-dedb-4fb6-9... Please please please don't make me defend people I don't want to defend.
      - alasdair_ 7y ago
        Thank you. I can't add, at all. I am going to edit the post to permanently enshrine my inability to do basic math. :)
- yusyusyus 7y ago
  The capacity is not fungible, even if with force of law. Further, even if this had been started 3 months ago, I sincerely doubt that the work would be bearing much fruit even now. Ventilators, generally, may be "well known", but the design and operation of a modern ventilator is probably not something that is "well known". Doing this kind of stuff is much more complex than our ability to scramble. The key is to think about this kind of crap before it becomes necessary. Without that, we won't have what we need on time. Things like this are just not solvable by throwing money at it after the fact.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    Two months earlier means two months earlier, even if it's "not in time" to prevent all shortages.
Spooky23 7y ago
You issue an emergency procurement. The Federal government has the added power of mandating action. Will it ship Amazon Prime? No. But you'll be surprised how quickly people will deliver.
rckstr 7y ago
You don't mandate as much as you put out an offer. With the right incentive pretty sure many companies could switch to produce these items. And that's the point, it takes time to set up a production line, and the main reason why the government should have acted before.
- sailfast 7y ago
  It would've been nice if the thing the Government _did_ do before this had worked out. Instead, a large company bought the awardee and they requested the government cancel the contract, which resulted in a re-award and... no ventilators yet: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-v...
blackguardx 7y ago
The federal government needed to act as a facilitator, connecting manufacturers with ventilator companies or other experts in medical device manufacturing. With the supply chains broken, work could have started to bring up new domestic part manufacturers. If all medical device manufacturing was prioritized, lead times would probably shorten to weeks, not months. This is happening by industry already, but again the federal government's facilitator role could definitely speed it up. Even in a crisis, there are business interests that need to be looked after. A company can't simply decide to stop making parts for its customers and shift to making medical device parts. It would probably soon run out of money and not be able to pay its workers. Here the federal government could eliminate business risk by giving out loans/grants for retooling and guaranteeing the purchase of parts that are made.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  This is, in fact, something the federal government is historically quite good at. The Apollo program was (from the NASA side) primarily an organizational project. The feds have traditionally been in a unique position to do global information-brokering.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

coliveira 7y ago

I can guarantee you that this country has the industrial capacity to produce any kind of parts, especially for a well known technology like ventilators. The fact is that they are not doing it because nobody alerted and told them to do so three months ago.

freeopinion 7y ago
I'm not convinced that it would have been reasonable to do so three months ago. Three months ago there were rumors that there was something brewing in some part of China most people had never heard of. I point this out to suggest that your expectation might be a little unfair. If such an order had gone out one month ago it would have been controversial. But if you want to say that the administration is a month behind in their reactions it would be more fair. You seem to have observed that a giant beauracracy is reacting weeks behind a crisis and this seems to upset you.
- coliveira 7y ago
  > Three months ago there were rumors that there was something brewing in some part of China I disagree. Anyone paying attention knew, in the first weeks of January, that something very dangerous was happening. Moreover, we cannot equate the US government to a common person. They have the most expensive intelligence apparatus in the world. And we have an expensive government exactly to protect the population against real threats like this.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    Congress was even briefed as such. They then went and sold their stocks, while downplaying it to the rest of us. AOC is right, it's time to make stock trading flat-out illegal for members of congress. They hold index funds or nothing.
    - abraae 7y ago
      They could have dumped their index funds for cash for a huge profit.
    - extrapickles 7y ago
      They should also be restricted to buying/selling with a 1-2 quarter lag on the buy/sell order to prevent them from dumping the indexes when they learn of something that will move the entire market like the current situation.
- thomk 7y ago
  3 months ago 5K people were infected in a single day in China. The current administration was completely trained on how to handle a pandemic right after the inauguration. Unfortunately most of those folks have been fired and 3 months ago we were distracted by yet another scandal this time ending in Impeachment. However 2 months ago this was the message from the White House: 'When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.' That un-fucking-believable 'head in the sand' moment happened at peak infection in China; 80K people infected. This administration isn't a month behind; they simply don't deal with things unless they are forced to. The US stockpiles ventilators for emergencies like this for a reason. Someone was asleep at the switch in our Federal Government and the reaction is to lie about how well they are doing and blame everyone else. I'm fed up, aren't you?
  - freeopinion 7y ago
    3 months ago the first four cases walked into a hospital in China. I don't want to defend the current US political powers. I'm highly discouraged about a lot of things. But it doesn't help to make unfair accusations based on bad facts. If your criticisms are based on fiction they get tossed out. Just rebase on truth and you might have some much more supportable criticism. There's plenty to legitimately criticize. When you drown out legitimate criticism with baseless criticism, the noise to signal suppresses real criticism. It is unclear whether this is intentional.
- mulmen 7y ago
  That’s why we had people embedded in the health services in China. To get warnings on this kind of event far in advance.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  "The giant bureaucracy" isn't the problem, in itself. The current administration in the white house, however, is. A lot of factors came together, hampering the response. Trump has fired lots of experts, many others left for other reasons and Trump has problems hiring Replacements. He disbanded that office in the White House. On top of that he didn't take the issue seriously at all. I would say that in early January it wasn't yet clear this would become a serious respiratory pandemic. Maybe not even to US intelligence services or the Chinese government. But late January and early February it dawned on most people (including me).
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  EDIT: I am wrong and can't add. Jan 30th was two months ago. Leaving this here to remind me not to post on HN pre-coffee. > Three months ago there were rumors that there was something brewing in some part of China most people had never heard of. Three months ago was January 30th. The number of cases on that date was 7,711 and the number had been increasing at roughly 50% every day for WEEKS at that point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_in_November_2019_–_January_2020 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019–20_coro...
  - freeopinion 7y ago
    Three months ago was December 30. "On 29 December 2019, a hospital in Wuhan admitted four individuals with pneumonia and recognized that all four had worked in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which sells live poultry, aquatic products, and several kinds of wild animals to the public." http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e3c63ca9-dedb-4fb6-9c1c-d057adb77b57 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e3c63ca9-dedb-4fb6-9... Please please please don't make me defend people I don't want to defend.
    - alasdair_ 7y ago
      Thank you. I can't add, at all. I am going to edit the post to permanently enshrine my inability to do basic math. :)
yusyusyus 7y ago
The capacity is not fungible, even if with force of law. Further, even if this had been started 3 months ago, I sincerely doubt that the work would be bearing much fruit even now. Ventilators, generally, may be "well known", but the design and operation of a modern ventilator is probably not something that is "well known". Doing this kind of stuff is much more complex than our ability to scramble. The key is to think about this kind of crap before it becomes necessary. Without that, we won't have what we need on time. Things like this are just not solvable by throwing money at it after the fact.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Two months earlier means two months earlier, even if it's "not in time" to prevent all shortages.

Spooky23 7y ago

You issue an emergency procurement. The Federal government has the added power of mandating action. Will it ship Amazon Prime? No. But you'll be surprised how quickly people will deliver.

rckstr 7y ago

You don't mandate as much as you put out an offer. With the right incentive pretty sure many companies could switch to produce these items. And that's the point, it takes time to set up a production line, and the main reason why the government should have acted before.

sailfast 7y ago
It would've been nice if the thing the Government _did_ do before this had worked out. Instead, a large company bought the awardee and they requested the government cancel the contract, which resulted in a re-award and... no ventilators yet: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-v...

blackguardx 7y ago

The federal government needed to act as a facilitator, connecting manufacturers with ventilator companies or other experts in medical device manufacturing. With the supply chains broken, work could have started to bring up new domestic part manufacturers. If all medical device manufacturing was prioritized, lead times would probably shorten to weeks, not months. This is happening by industry already, but again the federal government's facilitator role could definitely speed it up. Even in a crisis, there are business interests that need to be looked after. A company can't simply decide to stop making parts for its customers and shift to making medical device parts. It would probably soon run out of money and not be able to pay its workers. Here the federal government could eliminate business risk by giving out loans/grants for retooling and guaranteeing the purchase of parts that are made.

shadowgovt 7y ago
This is, in fact, something the federal government is historically quite good at. The Apollo program was (from the NASA side) primarily an organizational project. The feds have traditionally been in a unique position to do global information-brokering.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]