Closing Thought–31Mar20
We all have heard the horror stories of the shortages for must needed ventilators……there have been all sorts of accusations….from hoarding to shortages in supply….and then Donald of Orange decided that GM should get money (a billion dollars) to start-up manufacturing……
President Trump ordered General Motors on Friday to make ventilators for U.S. hospitals treating COVID-19 patients through a 1950’s wartime act—but the company says it was already rushing to make the devices, the latest development in a weeks-long drama as officials rang alarm bells that ventilator shortages could lead to a higher death toll.
But wait!
MIT has come up with a ventilator that would cost $100……
Clinical and design considerations will be published online; goal is to support rapid scale-up of device production to alleviate hospital shortages.
One of the most pressing shortages facing hospitals during the Covid-19 emergency is a lack of ventilators. These machines can keep patients breathing when they no longer can on their own, and they can cost around $30,000 each. Now, a rapidly assembled volunteer team of engineers, physicians, computer scientists, and others, centered at MIT, is working to implement a safe, inexpensive alternative for emergency use, which could be built quickly around the world.
The team, called MIT E-Vent (for emergency ventilator), was formed on March 12, 2020, in response to the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its members were brought together by the exhortations of doctors, friends, and a sudden flood of mail referencing a project done a decade ago in the MIT class 2.75 (Medical Device Design). Students working in consultation with local physicians designed a simple ventilator device that could be built with about $100 worth of parts. They published a paper detailing their design and testing, but the work ended at that point. Now, with a significant global need looming, a new team, linked to that course, has resumed the project at a highly accelerated pace.
MIT is offering the instructions for free on-line…..and yet GM is working on $1 billion as a start-op price tag…..now thinking about that people.
One more….taxpayer money used to make profits off of ventilators……
Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tried to plug a crucial hole in its preparations for a global pandemic, signing a $13.8 million contract with a Pennsylvania manufacturer to create a low-cost, portable, easy-to-use ventilator that could be stockpiled for emergencies.
This past September, with the design of the new Trilogy Evo Universal finally cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, HHS ordered 10,000 of the ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile at a cost of $3,280 each.
Then there is GM and its demands…..
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/28/pers-m28.html
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