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> We had several months, needed to react with urgency and failed. That's a rewrite of the actual history that occurred and what people understood along the way

> We had several months, needed to react with urgency and failed. That's a rewrite of the actual history that occurred and what people understood along the way. They had a realistic four to six weeks max to start production of ventilators. A herculean feat in fact. Even less time if you were going to judge it based on understanding the severity and particular intensive-care heavy effects of the virus. It was not a certainty to the outside world that it was human to human transmissable until the end of January. There was a lot of confusion due to the total lack of access to China and its data. From February 1st (China's reported numbers begin to spike here) to the point where you understand it's a high global risk, capable of a large scale outbreak that could threaten the US, it's another 1-2 weeks minimum based on the rate of expansion in China's reported numbers and their inability to contain it properly (and better yet, with China you watch what they do more than what they say; during that first and second week of February, China took what seemed like wild action domestically while playing down the danger of SARS-CoV-2 to the rest of the world, including regarding travel restrictions). Taking the decision to push billions of dollars in spending to jumpstart very early production of PPE and ventilators, is a big decision that you better be right about when you make it. You were going against the behavior of the entire developed world by producing ventilators in February, so now you need to be prepared to look like a paranoid lunatic, along with being called a racist and xenophobe while you restrict travel and close borders. It's February 7th and you need to coordinate with domestic industry, local governments, international agencies, and companies around the world. It's February 14th and you've got your first partnership together, they've agreed to produce ventilators. It's March 7-14th by the time they are able to produce their first ventilator after preparing a factory for it, preparing any necessary design changes to accomodate rapid scale production, and putting together a supply chain that can scale for the hundreds of specific parts in a ventilator. You need to build a scheme that can produce more ventilators than the present total global annual supply. It's mid to late April before they have consequential volume of production. Assuming things go well. Having closely followed all the ventilator efforts around the world, please show me a faster timeline that is realistic. You're only going to beat our present timeline by a matter of weeks, and that's if you aggressively jump out in front of prevailing 'wisdom' at the time. It's an extraordinary short amount of time to accomplish the ramping up of producing ventilators.

zuhayeer 7y ago
Understood for the production of ventilators. But it's impossible to ignore the other ways we could have prepared: namely redistribution / production of PPE for doctors, and quite simply sheltering in place much much earlier.
- adventured 7y ago
  No question there was an epic failure of preparation on normal PPE gear. The US Government should have had a stockpile of N95 masks, as one example, numbering in the multiple hundreds of millions. For something like this, the US really needed a stockpile of a billion plus masks (even if you have massive domestic production capabilities, you obviously can't always rely on that when a pandemic hits). The big failure was preparation rather than reaction with urgency to produce (that part is exceptionally difficult to do in such a short amount of time, it's setting yourself up for failure, as we've seen in most industrial nations). Throw into the mix the fact that the world's biggest manufacturer of PPE gear was the center of the pandemic. Meaning they needed all of their own supply and would not be able to export properly so the rest of the world could build up their own supplies. So you're on your own to make your gear (something many nations around the world have had to suffer miserably through; most nations are screwed in this situation, they simply can't make such gear quickly under any scenario). This rapidly broke global supply chains, something never before experienced during the post 1970 high globalization era where supply chains became very complex, more fragile and global. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have had more ventilators in stock - we should have. An extra tens of thousands of ventilators in our stockpile would not have been unreasonable. That's another preparation failure spanning decades into the past.
  - cameldrv 7y ago
    A lot of PPE left the country in January and that could have been prevented. A lot more screening and testing of travelers and symptomatic patients could have been done in February, and we might have been able to contain it in a similar manner to South Korea.
    - 7y ago

zuhayeer 7y ago

Understood for the production of ventilators. But it's impossible to ignore the other ways we could have prepared: namely redistribution / production of PPE for doctors, and quite simply sheltering in place much much earlier.

adventured 7y ago
No question there was an epic failure of preparation on normal PPE gear. The US Government should have had a stockpile of N95 masks, as one example, numbering in the multiple hundreds of millions. For something like this, the US really needed a stockpile of a billion plus masks (even if you have massive domestic production capabilities, you obviously can't always rely on that when a pandemic hits). The big failure was preparation rather than reaction with urgency to produce (that part is exceptionally difficult to do in such a short amount of time, it's setting yourself up for failure, as we've seen in most industrial nations). Throw into the mix the fact that the world's biggest manufacturer of PPE gear was the center of the pandemic. Meaning they needed all of their own supply and would not be able to export properly so the rest of the world could build up their own supplies. So you're on your own to make your gear (something many nations around the world have had to suffer miserably through; most nations are screwed in this situation, they simply can't make such gear quickly under any scenario). This rapidly broke global supply chains, something never before experienced during the post 1970 high globalization era where supply chains became very complex, more fragile and global. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have had more ventilators in stock - we should have. An extra tens of thousands of ventilators in our stockpile would not have been unreasonable. That's another preparation failure spanning decades into the past.
- cameldrv 7y ago
  A lot of PPE left the country in January and that could have been prevented. A lot more screening and testing of travelers and symptomatic patients could have been done in February, and we might have been able to contain it in a similar manner to South Korea.
  - 7y ago