Socialist states solve the pricing ventilator differently : they have one leader ( the government ) regulating the production and the prices. It should work great on paper. In reality, it happens kind of like with the testing kits : the whole process is inefficient because nobody has a real incentive to make it work ( since they all work for state who can’t fire them ), everything is in slow motion and in the end you can’t find any ventilators. The few ventilators available will be conveniently available for the leaders and their families and the poorly connected masses will die. Problem solved. Ah, if you have enough money and bribe, you may still be able to get a ventilator ( the socialist version of supply and demand ).
Just for the record, I have no idea why we are talking about Nancy Pelosi, but she was in SF on February 24, not February 28. For anyone interested.
how is the outcome any different when only rich states will be able to afford ventilators in a bidding war?
Rapid Test Kits on the way to Florida
[The Florida TImes Union](Coronavirus: Jacksonville to receive rapid testing kits) reports that a CA based company has developed “one of the first rapid coronavirus diagnostic test kits.” The 45 minute test kit will be used “primarily in hospitals and emergency rooms.”
The good news is that Cepheid, the company producing the tests, plans to produce 50,000 test/day starting as early as this week.
“We’ve asked to be a big part of that,” DeSantis said.
WHO hesitated for weeks before calling it a pandemic. The Chinese communist party lied and tried to hide the truth for at least a month ( I do not place the equal sign between Chinese citizens and their leaders, since China is not a free country ).
Placing too much decision power in the hands of government institutions will always be a bad idea, irrespective what bureaucrat is leading them. It is only after private companies and labs got the green light to make testing kits that we started to get more tests done. The most qualified scientist placed in a leading position of a government institution will turn into a part time scientist - part time politician, in order to survive. Having the knowledge, integrity and having the thick skin to stomach a leading government position are 2 different qualities that often fight with each other.
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During that time, the WHO was very clear that the name panedemic didn’t matter to how important the urgency of the situation was. They were urging the entire world to take very swift, strong action that the USA did not end up taking for the most part until it was too late to do many of those things starting in January. I followed it closely and read their recommendations regularly. It is incorrect to imply they didn’t take it seriously until it was an official pandemic. It was already getting equal attention and emphasis before that. Local officials in China lied and hid the truth from NOVEMBER. I don’t know when top party officials knew the situation but it was not in November. They did not take enough action soon enough and had a delay of what seems to be about a month. They did not stop enough of the new year travel and they don’t seem to have been honest about the numbers, but once they started taking action, they took very, very strong action that worked. They took action sooner and did much more than we have done. The spread did not get out of the main hotspot nearly to the same level it has already in the USA. They were therefore able to use testing and contact tracing (also because they actually had enough tests). They ramped up protective gear, masks, respirators quickly and used cutting edge treatments to improve survival rates, built hospitals, got other doctors from around the country to Wuhan, etc all much faster than we have done. I am not a fan of China, but China gave us enough warning that we could have a much, much better situation now had Trump listened to his advisers in January (one, Azar, had to wait 2 weeks until Jan 18 to talk to him about how urgent and dangerous he felt the situation was!) People were telling him the right things to do and he didn’t do them. His travel ban was weak and ineffective and the only big action he took in from Jan to mid-march. Stephen Hann of the FDA (appointed by Trump and not qualified on paper to my eyes to run the FDA) seems to have been the main player who held up testing. Trump is the boss and should have known this was happening and stepped in to correct the situation. He did not. I have a pretty sharp boss who is on top of everything and would have picked up on something like that were she the president in that situation.
More people will die in the end, because the total number of ventilators per capita will be lower across the country ( remember : no incentives, no action, no ventilators for anybody except for very few ). Talking about poor states : it is all a matter or priorities. The one complaining about was Cuomo and he is not in a poor state ( at least he should not, based on what he is taxing people ).
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/politics/testing-backlog-coronavirus-quest-invs/index.html
(CNN)As the US health care system has scrambled to track the spread of coronavirus, one of the nation’s largest commercial labs has faced a backlog of tests that ballooned in the last two weeks, and has delayed results in some cases up to 10 days.
New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics had about 160,000 coronavirus test orders waiting to be processed on March 25, which amounted to about half of the 320,000 total orders for the tests the company had received up to that date, according to Quest internal materials obtained by CNN.
The company, which is now testing for the virus at a dozen labs across the country, referred to the orders as a “significant amount of backlog,” according to the materials.
Although a vast network of labs at public health departments and universities are also testing for the novel coronavirus, the Trump administration has leaned on commercial labs, which have greater capacity, to roll out widespread testing
Quest and an array of other commercial labs have launched and expanded their testing capacity over the last month, and on Monday President Donald Trump announced that the US had tested more than 1 million people for the virus.
Yet healthcare workers, state officials and others have criticized the pace of coronavirus testing in the US as insufficient to enable timely quarantining of patients and to obtain an accurate understanding of the virus’ scope. The White House warned Tuesday that the virus could lead to the deaths of anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans…
What kind of state do you consider China to be? Which countries do you mean?
China worked incredibly fast and efficiently once it started to try around Jan 20 or 23. The old China would have been more like what you describe at times but probably not when it came to life or death seriously situations like this. Now that the economy opened up so ordinary people can make money, it’s entirely different there from the 1970s and 1980s.
If NY doesn’t get under control it is going to spread to many, many other places.
I suggest you go look up dates when CA and WA governors issued stay at home orders vs. when they had their firsts cases and clusters and then compare that to NY’s dates.
Talking about states, my husband has a say : when the tide is high, you don’t know who’s swimming naked.
All that money you collect from high takes and then funnel to buy political capital instead of being a good steward, will come back and bite you in case of an emergency.
This makes no sense. If the federal government were coordinating the purchases and the price, it would be cheaper for EVERYONE. If the rationale for not doing this is to “punish” states for not being prepared, and also “punish” = letting people die, then that is just not a philosophy I can get behind. Ever.
(and honestly, it’s a moot point because Trump did the socialist thing and authorized the Defense Production Act and is having GM make ventilators…)
I agree, in this case my neighbor’s rats will become my rats, so I may as well pay for his exterminator if he can’t.
When many of us who don’t live in NY hear NY talk about the people dying there without seeming to understand the same thing is happening all over the US and the world, it makes people outside NY feel like NYers don’t care if anyone outside their state dies. It doesn’t feel good when reading. We should care about all deaths equally. They aren’t more tragic if they happen in one place.
And the backhand references to how the top docs in NY will solve this imply there are no top docs anywhere other than NY. It’s insulting and ridiculous, but not a surprise that NYers think this. They’re so used to talking like this they don’t realize how egotistical it is.
A death in NY is sad. A death outside NY is equally sad. This is the main point. One place’s deaths are no more tragic, no one place has a monopoly on top healthcare talent. Let’s get data and share resources to where they are most needed according to the data, not according to a guess or a sad story or an egotistical claim. Requesting data and sharing of scarce national resources is the polar opposite of not caring.
Re: the need for ventilators & deaths.
Didn’t someone post a reference that something like 70-85% of people who need to be put on a ventilator due to COVID 19 end up dying?
Can anyone clarify? I found the statistic depressing as heck — all those ventilators and for what result?
I don’t mean to sound insensitive. It’s despair you hear.
@milee30 You clearly have something against New York . I think we get that by now. Glad your governor in Florida seems to finally be getting with the program. This is terrible, no matter where we live. Virginia is in lockdown until June 10th. I’m not looking forward to going that long but what can you do. Best of luck in Florida!
“What kind of state do you consider China to be?”
I think China is a mix, depending which leader is in power. I also think that rural China and big city China are 2 different countries. You see, in a city like Wuhan you build modern buildings, fancy meeting rooms but on the other hand you have wet markets with extremely poor hygiene and squat toilets. It’s a paradox. Even more that the homeless in the US. It’s like I am going to this fancy meeting wearing proudly my Chanel suit but I did not take a shower.
Nothing at all - I like NY and have many friends who happen to live there. Wanting data before determining where to send scarce national resources, thinking there may be medical expertise outside one single location and thinking all US deaths are equally sad is reasonable and not remotely a sign of hate.
Good luck in VA. I like it, too.
This thread is too painful to read right now, with everything else that’s going on here.
Taking a break.