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> A little innovation is required here You can't 'innovate' a doubling of trained medical staff, not in a matter of months.

by orra 5y ago

umvi 5y ago
Innovation involves working around limitations. I already conceded that medical staff was a limitation. So how do you work around it? Training covid-specialized temps, perhaps? I don't know the answer because I'm not an expert in that problem domain. But I've innovated around similar limitations in my current domain expertise so I believe it is possible.
- ben_w 5y ago
  > Training covid-specialized temps, perhaps? You can’t. That’s the point. Nursing, even at the lowest level, is not a trivial skill. The only people you could scale up at short notice like that — if there wasn’t also a general all-sector labour shortage — is nursing assistants, who have to generally do their thing under supervision of a registered nurse, which is an Associate degree or a Batchelor degree. (There is an intermediate level of Licensed Practical Nurse who can be unsupervised but can’t supervise others, which is “just” a one year vocational course). > But I've innovated around similar limitations in my current domain expertise so I believe it is possible. Unless you’ve innovated around a crippling multi-state demand spike, during a general labour marked supply shortage, in a sector where getting things wrong is literally lethal and where people sue for malpractice even for sub-lethal errors despite the government mandated minimum qualification levels, I think you are making an error in thinking your experience is transferable. (If you do have that experience, please share, as that sounds like one heck of an anecdote!) That said: One thing you could “innovate” that would technically work is making a roving vaccination drone that hunts down and forcibly vaccinates people that don’t want a vaccine. Even ignoring medical ethics, I don’t think that’s a great idea. But technically…
  - umvi 5y ago
    > You can’t. That’s the point. Hmm, funny. I'm pretty sure I could train a non-programmer to do a specialized type of programming task in a few months if it were a crisis even though that person doesn't have a computer science degree. I don't see why healthcare is so much more difficult to train temporary specialists. Didn't we do it during WW2 (rapidly train medical specialists in a matter of months, aka medics, without a 4 year degree)? > Unless you’ve innovated around a crippling multi-state demand spike, during a general labour marked supply shortage, in a sector where getting things wrong is literally lethal and where people sue for malpractice even for sub-lethal errors despite the government mandated minimum qualification levels, I think you are making an error in thinking your experience is transferable. Yeah that's the real problem. Any innovations that alleviate the problem are going to run afoul of some bureaucratic, regulatory, and legal red tape put in place over the last century. So let me rephrase - I could probably innovate and solve this problem if I were a medical professional. But not without running afoul of some red tape somewhere. But I say red tape is meant to be broken in times of crisis.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      > I'm pretty sure I could train a non-programmer to do a specialized type of programming task in a few months if it were a crisis even though that person doesn't have a computer science degree. Then you’re either underestimating the complexity of programming or overestimating general skill level: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ """One of the difficult tasks was to schedule a meeting room in a scheduling application, using information contained in several email messages.""" """Level 3 = 5% of Adult Population … The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”""" People here are unusually good with computers. I have no reason to think intensive care of respiratory illnesses is easier than code. I don’t know enough medicine to say what typical treatment is, but a quick search says the entire USA has 93k ICU beds, that the number occupied by COVID patients went from 3500 in June to 26,000 in September, that the total number of COVID patients (including non-ICU) peaked at 97800 in September (and 133,250 in Jan) and that there are oxygen shortages in various hospitals worldwide because too many patients need the same treatment at the same time. Given how easy it is to make oxygen — and to make something that makes it — a shortage of it can only happen when there are enough other things that also need to be fixed that it isn’t the limiting factor. As someone else said elsewhere on this thread, the actual innovation is the vaccine.

> A little innovation is required here You can't 'innovate' a doubling of trained medical staff, not in a matter of months.

by orra 5y ago

> A little innovation is required here You can't 'innovate' a doubling of trained medical staff, not in a matter of months.

umvi 5y ago

Innovation involves working around limitations. I already conceded that medical staff was a limitation. So how do you work around it? Training covid-specialized temps, perhaps? I don't know the answer because I'm not an expert in that problem domain. But I've innovated around similar limitations in my current domain expertise so I believe it is possible.

ben_w 5y ago
> Training covid-specialized temps, perhaps? You can’t. That’s the point. Nursing, even at the lowest level, is not a trivial skill. The only people you could scale up at short notice like that — if there wasn’t also a general all-sector labour shortage — is nursing assistants, who have to generally do their thing under supervision of a registered nurse, which is an Associate degree or a Batchelor degree. (There is an intermediate level of Licensed Practical Nurse who can be unsupervised but can’t supervise others, which is “just” a one year vocational course). > But I've innovated around similar limitations in my current domain expertise so I believe it is possible. Unless you’ve innovated around a crippling multi-state demand spike, during a general labour marked supply shortage, in a sector where getting things wrong is literally lethal and where people sue for malpractice even for sub-lethal errors despite the government mandated minimum qualification levels, I think you are making an error in thinking your experience is transferable. (If you do have that experience, please share, as that sounds like one heck of an anecdote!) That said: One thing you could “innovate” that would technically work is making a roving vaccination drone that hunts down and forcibly vaccinates people that don’t want a vaccine. Even ignoring medical ethics, I don’t think that’s a great idea. But technically…
- umvi 5y ago
  > You can’t. That’s the point. Hmm, funny. I'm pretty sure I could train a non-programmer to do a specialized type of programming task in a few months if it were a crisis even though that person doesn't have a computer science degree. I don't see why healthcare is so much more difficult to train temporary specialists. Didn't we do it during WW2 (rapidly train medical specialists in a matter of months, aka medics, without a 4 year degree)? > Unless you’ve innovated around a crippling multi-state demand spike, during a general labour marked supply shortage, in a sector where getting things wrong is literally lethal and where people sue for malpractice even for sub-lethal errors despite the government mandated minimum qualification levels, I think you are making an error in thinking your experience is transferable. Yeah that's the real problem. Any innovations that alleviate the problem are going to run afoul of some bureaucratic, regulatory, and legal red tape put in place over the last century. So let me rephrase - I could probably innovate and solve this problem if I were a medical professional. But not without running afoul of some red tape somewhere. But I say red tape is meant to be broken in times of crisis.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    > I'm pretty sure I could train a non-programmer to do a specialized type of programming task in a few months if it were a crisis even though that person doesn't have a computer science degree. Then you’re either underestimating the complexity of programming or overestimating general skill level: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ """One of the difficult tasks was to schedule a meeting room in a scheduling application, using information contained in several email messages.""" """Level 3 = 5% of Adult Population … The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”""" People here are unusually good with computers. I have no reason to think intensive care of respiratory illnesses is easier than code. I don’t know enough medicine to say what typical treatment is, but a quick search says the entire USA has 93k ICU beds, that the number occupied by COVID patients went from 3500 in June to 26,000 in September, that the total number of COVID patients (including non-ICU) peaked at 97800 in September (and 133,250 in Jan) and that there are oxygen shortages in various hospitals worldwide because too many patients need the same treatment at the same time. Given how easy it is to make oxygen — and to make something that makes it — a shortage of it can only happen when there are enough other things that also need to be fixed that it isn’t the limiting factor. As someone else said elsewhere on this thread, the actual innovation is the vaccine.