
Engineers launched crash programs for ventilators. What will happen to them? - pross356
https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/the-great-ventilator-rush
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burfog
People spend a month on a ventilator, and they end up brain damaged. It's
probably due to the anesthesia needed to restrain a person who has tubes
jammed into the lungs.

People went half a century on iron lungs. They were fine. They could talk and
eat.

It's clear what the best solution for the patients is. We aren't using it
because it is annoying for the hospitals. It is really bulky, it slows down
access to the torso, and nobody wants to pay for that.

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inetsee
I find it interesting that this article implies that the US will not need more
than the number of ventilators it already has, while at the same time another
article linked here on HN (Experts warn parts of U.S. on verge of being
overwhelmed by Covid-19 resurgence [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/coronavirus-
covid19-world-june...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/coronavirus-
covid19-world-june24-1.5624885) ) warns of the US being overwhelmed by a
resurgence of COVID-19. I'm somewhat more inclined to give credibility to
IEEE, but a lot of news outlets are reporting significant increases in cases
lately.

Who am I supposed to believe?

~~~
icedistilled
See the other comment about how up to 90% of patients put on a ventilator died
and those who lived have terrible problems.

Also, we learned some since the start of the pandemic and have better
techniques of preventing hospitalized cases from needing ventilators.

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classics2
Like most get rich quick schemes, they will disintegrate and disinvest a few
people of their money as they go.

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redis_mlc
As I said at the time corona arrived in the US, hospitals would rather watch
patients die than use unapproved ventilators in the US because of legal and
insurance liability issues.

Even though the FDA granted an exception, I doubt if that changed the above.

In the end, DIY ventilators didn't matter because approved ventilators ended
up killing 65% to 90% of patients that used them for corona, generated a bill
of $1 million for 3 weeks per patient, and destroyed the lung tissue (and
other organs) of most survivors.

The CDC had from SARS-1 (2003) to 2019 to do their job, and they didn't. It's
a stunning failure on so many levels that I have to ask what that department
does all day?

