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The scale of thinking here is amazingly constricted. Imagine if we had approached this like we did WWII. We would have nationalized the effort to produce vacc

The scale of thinking here is amazingly constricted. Imagine if we had approached this like we did WWII. We would have nationalized the effort to produce vaccines, building entire production chains and staffing them with anyone in need of work. We would have built infrastructure to produce n95 masks and shipped them to every address. What would this mean? We would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, employed millions of people, strengthened our economy, and would now be wrapping up vaccinating everyone. Our response to the crisis should be noted as a failure of monumental proportions. The lack of leadership at all levels of government continues to be astounding.

thechao 6y ago
The US response to WW2 took years. We’re still in the months range. You can’t parallel use the early sequential phases; you can’t fabricate this equipment — nor the expertise to manufacture it from nothing in just a few months.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Yes, actually, you can. (A well-endowed manufacturer can produce this equipment.) But it takes coordination, leadership, unlimited funding, and federal authority to step across red tape and corporate veils and IP to get things done. I was involved with some of this stuff. I know first hand how uncoordinated and un-led much of it was. We needed technocrats on private jets flying around the country tooling up production and solving every supply chain bottleneck like they were Elon trying to squeeze out luxury car production at the end of a quarter. And vaccine production ABSOLUTELY could've been parallelized with approval. In fact, it was. They were stockpiling doses before approval. But the effort was at least an order of magnitude smaller than it ought to have been. We constantly make excuses for this lack of effort. We shouldn't. We know what is possible. We can read history books.
  - visarga 6y ago
    I'm wondering how we'd fared if Elon was in charge.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      That's a tough one. Could go either way (he's unstable... but resourceful). Tesla has been helping CureVac, though, which is one of the other mRNA vaccine providers (and could perhaps help scale out Moderna and Pfizer's vaccine, if they were given access to all their IP?).
      - JamesBarney 6y ago
        I don't think we could have done worse.
        Robotbeat 6y ago
        Europe is somehow vaccinating fewer people as a percent of the population than the US.
        Slartie 6y ago
        This is true, and it will stay that way for a while. The US (at federal level) failed at nearly everything regarding containment of the virus, but got one single thing right in this pandemic: ordering vaccines. Ordering enough from the most promising manufacturers, at high-enough prices, and early. The EU failed at all of these three things in the most historic way possible.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  > The US response to WW2 took years. That's incorrect. 4 months before the Pearl Harbour, FDR instated the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board by executive order. The purpose of the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board was to coordinate the distribution of materials and commodities related to national defense and to assist the Office of Production Management (OPM) in carrying out their overlapping duties. On january 1942, merely 4 weeks after Pearl Harbour, FDR dissolved the SPAB and instated the War Production Board by executive order. The WPB directed conversion of industries from peacetime work to war needs, allocated scarce materials, established priorities in the distribution of materials and services, and prohibited nonessential production. It rationed such commodities as gasoline, heating oil, metals, rubber, paper and plastics. Moreover, the U.S. economy was already radically shifting before 1941. Between 1939 and 1941, unemployment feel from 17.2% to 9.9% and by 1942 it feel to 4.2%. There's also an implicit assumption in your statement: the U.S. not actively joining the War until june 1944. That's incorrect as well. The U.S. already actively engaged in the North African Campaign on 11 May 1942. Barely 6 months after Pearl Harbour. Pearl Harbour kicked off the Pacific Theatre right off the bat. In June of 1942 - 7 months after Pearl - the Japanese Navy was soundly defeated in the Battle of Midway by Admiral Nimitz. August 1942 - 8 months after Pearl - the U.S. took the offensive at Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto, who led the Pearl attack, never believed Japan would be able to win from the United States in the first place. He believed it was a massive strategical mistake. He has conveyed his feelings: > "I can run wild for six months ... after that, I have no expectation of success". Which is exactly what happened. So, no, the involvement of the United States in World War II is anything but an example of a nation state being forced to wait until it has ramped it's economic output before it can act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_durin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto%27s_sleeping_giant_quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto%27s_sleeping_...
refurb 6y ago
We would have nationalized the effort to produce vaccines, building entire production chains and staffing them with anyone in need of work. But that's not what happened in WW2. Businesses were not nationalized and they weren't staffed by anyone in need of work. The War Productions board simply directed companies on what to produce. They could run their business as they see fit with some controls like wage caps, raw material quota, production quotas. And it works better for war - switching from making planes to airplanes versus having companies switch from making microchips to making vaccines.
Robotbeat 6y ago
I agree. He insists there's an uncopyable bottleneck that couldn't be overcome by opening things up, BUT then also admits his knowledge of the purported microfluidics device (which isn't uncommon in pharma manufacture... and big pharma has capacity to manufacture bespoke microfluidics devices if they know the specs) is fuzzy because... ...well, because it's NOT open. The very bottleneck he's talking about is something he has to wave his hands about because it's bespoke, proprietary, and not well-published or open. This inadvertently validates the original tweet!
- thayne 6y ago
  Another possible benefit of opening it up is that maybe someone else would see a way to speed up production because they have an outside perspective.
  - visarga 6y ago
    Clearly patents and secrets work against humanity in this instance. The government should just buy the tech and open it up.
    - thayne 6y ago
      I think that in general patents, copyrights, trade secrets etc. have a negative impact on innovation by hindering potential innovators from building on the works of others. The question is, is that negative impact offset by the positive impact of the incentives to innovate granted by exclusive rights to IP?
    - camkego 6y ago
      You don't think the government already thought of that? (for patents in general, that is). From wikipedia: Section 1498 gives the federal government of the United States the "right to use patented inventions without permission, while paying the patent holder 'reasonable and entire compensation' which is usually "set at ten percent of sales or less" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_...
renewiltord 6y ago
The only conclusion one can make is that it isn't as bad as we're claiming it is. If it were as bad as we claimed, we would be rushing RNs into ICU training, going full Taiwan on mask construction etc instead of saying "Don't wear masks" because we're scared we'll run out of masks.
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
Disagree. Wasteful, authoritarian and we are not in WWII. Nothing good comes out of nationalized production chains and massive government intervention of any type. Sometimes it is needed, but let's not overreact.

thechao 6y ago

The US response to WW2 took years. We’re still in the months range. You can’t parallel use the early sequential phases; you can’t fabricate this equipment — nor the expertise to manufacture it from nothing in just a few months.

Robotbeat 6y ago
Yes, actually, you can. (A well-endowed manufacturer can produce this equipment.) But it takes coordination, leadership, unlimited funding, and federal authority to step across red tape and corporate veils and IP to get things done. I was involved with some of this stuff. I know first hand how uncoordinated and un-led much of it was. We needed technocrats on private jets flying around the country tooling up production and solving every supply chain bottleneck like they were Elon trying to squeeze out luxury car production at the end of a quarter. And vaccine production ABSOLUTELY could've been parallelized with approval. In fact, it was. They were stockpiling doses before approval. But the effort was at least an order of magnitude smaller than it ought to have been. We constantly make excuses for this lack of effort. We shouldn't. We know what is possible. We can read history books.
- visarga 6y ago
  I'm wondering how we'd fared if Elon was in charge.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    That's a tough one. Could go either way (he's unstable... but resourceful). Tesla has been helping CureVac, though, which is one of the other mRNA vaccine providers (and could perhaps help scale out Moderna and Pfizer's vaccine, if they were given access to all their IP?).
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      I don't think we could have done worse.
      - Robotbeat 6y ago
        Europe is somehow vaccinating fewer people as a percent of the population than the US.
        Slartie 6y ago
        This is true, and it will stay that way for a while. The US (at federal level) failed at nearly everything regarding containment of the virus, but got one single thing right in this pandemic: ordering vaccines. Ordering enough from the most promising manufacturers, at high-enough prices, and early. The EU failed at all of these three things in the most historic way possible.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
> The US response to WW2 took years. That's incorrect. 4 months before the Pearl Harbour, FDR instated the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board by executive order. The purpose of the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board was to coordinate the distribution of materials and commodities related to national defense and to assist the Office of Production Management (OPM) in carrying out their overlapping duties. On january 1942, merely 4 weeks after Pearl Harbour, FDR dissolved the SPAB and instated the War Production Board by executive order. The WPB directed conversion of industries from peacetime work to war needs, allocated scarce materials, established priorities in the distribution of materials and services, and prohibited nonessential production. It rationed such commodities as gasoline, heating oil, metals, rubber, paper and plastics. Moreover, the U.S. economy was already radically shifting before 1941. Between 1939 and 1941, unemployment feel from 17.2% to 9.9% and by 1942 it feel to 4.2%. There's also an implicit assumption in your statement: the U.S. not actively joining the War until june 1944. That's incorrect as well. The U.S. already actively engaged in the North African Campaign on 11 May 1942. Barely 6 months after Pearl Harbour. Pearl Harbour kicked off the Pacific Theatre right off the bat. In June of 1942 - 7 months after Pearl - the Japanese Navy was soundly defeated in the Battle of Midway by Admiral Nimitz. August 1942 - 8 months after Pearl - the U.S. took the offensive at Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto, who led the Pearl attack, never believed Japan would be able to win from the United States in the first place. He believed it was a massive strategical mistake. He has conveyed his feelings: > "I can run wild for six months ... after that, I have no expectation of success". Which is exactly what happened. So, no, the involvement of the United States in World War II is anything but an example of a nation state being forced to wait until it has ramped it's economic output before it can act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_durin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto%27s_sleeping_giant_quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto%27s_sleeping_...

refurb 6y ago

We would have nationalized the effort to produce vaccines, building entire production chains and staffing them with anyone in need of work. But that's not what happened in WW2. Businesses were not nationalized and they weren't staffed by anyone in need of work. The War Productions board simply directed companies on what to produce. They could run their business as they see fit with some controls like wage caps, raw material quota, production quotas. And it works better for war - switching from making planes to airplanes versus having companies switch from making microchips to making vaccines.

Robotbeat 6y ago

I agree. He insists there's an uncopyable bottleneck that couldn't be overcome by opening things up, BUT then also admits his knowledge of the purported microfluidics device (which isn't uncommon in pharma manufacture... and big pharma has capacity to manufacture bespoke microfluidics devices if they know the specs) is fuzzy because... ...well, because it's NOT open. The very bottleneck he's talking about is something he has to wave his hands about because it's bespoke, proprietary, and not well-published or open. This inadvertently validates the original tweet!

thayne 6y ago
Another possible benefit of opening it up is that maybe someone else would see a way to speed up production because they have an outside perspective.
- visarga 6y ago
  Clearly patents and secrets work against humanity in this instance. The government should just buy the tech and open it up.
  - thayne 6y ago
    I think that in general patents, copyrights, trade secrets etc. have a negative impact on innovation by hindering potential innovators from building on the works of others. The question is, is that negative impact offset by the positive impact of the incentives to innovate granted by exclusive rights to IP?
  - camkego 6y ago
    You don't think the government already thought of that? (for patents in general, that is). From wikipedia: Section 1498 gives the federal government of the United States the "right to use patented inventions without permission, while paying the patent holder 'reasonable and entire compensation' which is usually "set at ten percent of sales or less" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_...

renewiltord 6y ago

The only conclusion one can make is that it isn't as bad as we're claiming it is. If it were as bad as we claimed, we would be rushing RNs into ICU training, going full Taiwan on mask construction etc instead of saying "Don't wear masks" because we're scared we'll run out of masks.

mrmonkeyman 6y ago

Disagree. Wasteful, authoritarian and we are not in WWII. Nothing good comes out of nationalized production chains and massive government intervention of any type. Sometimes it is needed, but let's not overreact.