
Rich Americans are trying to buy their own personal ventilators - doener
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-rich-in-us-trying-to-buy-their-own-ventilators-2020-3
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sokoloff
I’m working on an emergency ventilator project with an anesthesiologist friend
of mind, as I’m sure a lot of people are right now.

Being perfectly honest, if I was rich, I’d seek to buy an AED, a portable
ventilator, an O2 concentrator, and other life-sustaining equipment for every
place I stayed at. One difference is I’d be willing to wait until after the
fat part of this pandemic passes.

Because I’m not rich (and not that much of an AH), I’ve chosen to just buy a
pulse-ox, a thermometer, some vitamins, and OTC meds and if I get a serious
case, will turn up into the public healthcare system.

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sneak
Oxygen concentrators and AEDs are relatively inexpensive and common, fwiw.

It’s really the ventilator that’s the costly bit (and these days the
bottleneck); those things are quite expensive as they are regulated medical
devices (AEDs are too but they are cheaper for some reason).

I don’t know that having one at home is ideal unless you are also rich enough
to have someone on staff to provide medical treatment as well.

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doener
Seems like rich Americans and rich Russians have something in common:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651004)

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Gatsky
This is hilarious. Will they also buy their own intensive care doctor to
intubate them?

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dogma1138
Quite likely they’ll staff an entire medical unit.

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mrbonner
My dad died from multiple strokes this Feb. When he was transported to another
hospital for a brain surgery he was intubated. A couple of days later, the ICU
doctor came and told us to prepare to fulfill his wishes. They said to have
him intubated again would cause a great pain for him. Also, chest compress
would be lots of pain. We did let my dad go in peace.

Here I am, wondering if people know what it feels like to be intubated? It is
not something you can do off and on when you feel like it. There was a team of
anesthesiologists there to seduce my dad when they shoved the tube in his wind
pipe.

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JetSpiegel
This is being completely ignored everywhere. The bottleneck is on medical
professionals, not hardware

I'm sorry for your loss.

PS: You mean "sedate", not seduce.

~~~
mrbonner
Lol: yes, it's "sedated".

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Slartie
This is the jet-set version of ordinary people buying big-packs of face masks.
Despicable, but entirely expectable.

I hope the manufacturers keep their stance of not selling to individuals.
Though it would surprise me if some billionaires weren't already busy setting
up fake "medical" companies as a means to buy survival gear and recruit
standby medical personnel for their dozens of mansions.

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notyourday
Unless you are in a fantastic shape buying a ventilator is fool's gold. Life
is not "Chicago Med" or "Resident" \- needing a ventilator means you are
probably screwed.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8404197](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8404197)

The survival rate is 30% at a 1 year mark.

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ceejayoz
They’d best make sure their staff - particularly bodyguards - don’t lose a
loved one to a lack of ventilator access.

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a3n
#pitchforks

