GM suppliers preparing to manufacture parts for 200,000 ventilators – IOTW Report

GM suppliers preparing to manufacture parts for 200,000 ventilators

Tuesday, 24 March 2020, 12:30 MJA Uncategorized 10

Crain’s Detroit Business-

The “Arsenal of Health” is mobilizing.

Parts suppliers for General Motors Co. are preparing to manufacture parts for at least 200,000 ventilators in an effort to stave off a projected shortage of the machines in the fight against the deadly respiratory illness COVID-19.

And Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plans to help with the production of masks during the coronavirus emergency, according to media reports. read more

10 Comments on GM suppliers preparing to manufacture parts for 200,000 ventilators

  1. Read an article yesterday of a Canadian doctor who was able to do some simple reengineering of a respirator to make it serve eight people. Are we doing these things in a less efficient manner?

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  3. As soon as the emergency is over, manufacture of medical products will immediately return overseas, when it should be staying here. Production of products vital to the people of the U.S. should stay in the U.S. We should never voluntarily place ourselves at the mercy of any other nation.

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  4. Homo Cuomo was on tv earlier actually bitching that PRESIDENT Trump isn’t forcing companies to make ventilators. He doesn’t have to because they are stepping up to the plate on their own dummy! Homo Cuomo talks like he’s had a stroke while sniffing airplane glue simultaneously.

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  5. Different Tim
    MARCH 24, 2020 AT 12:34 PM
    “Read an article yesterday of a Canadian doctor who was able to do some simple reengineering of a respirator to make it serve eight people. Are we doing these things in a less efficient manner?”

    …modern medicine is a straitjacket of laws, protocols, trials and tests, and the lawyers have made “defensive medicine” the order of the day. Innovation is heavily discouraged in this environment, at least on live patients, because if you do ANYTHING a thousand OTHER medical professionals wouldn’t do in the same situation, and the patient does not have a PERFECT outcome,you WILL be sued to smithereens and your Government permission slip to make a living taken from you forever.

    They don’t even have to prove the problem was because of what you did. The fact that you did *something* non-standard is enough to blame ANY problem the patient has, now or in future, on you forever and for all time.

    You can’t even get a patient to sign a wavier, because the patient and/or family can always argue the patient was too sick, demented, medicated, SOMETHING, to understand.

    The only way currently around it is with controlled studies with informed consent WELL before the fact, and even then, SOME of your patients are going to get a placebo.

    With a deadly illness, the placebo is a death sentence. You want to decide who dies? SHOULD you be ALLOWED to decide who dies? Can you be SUED for allowing someone to die? Will there be riots if too many (fill in the protected minority) are allowed to die?

    …but, if there’s no placebo, your data doesn’t prove they wouldn’t have gotten better ANYWAY…

    All of this stifles innovation, which is why the President is doing his “last chance” order and regulatory changes, to cut through SOME of this.

    Problem is, if you go too far the OTHER way, you may get a swashbuckling doc who views patients as guinea pigs and does random, or even harmful, things to them with insufficient thought, just to see what happens. Some docs have so much mental insulation that they don’t see patients as people, and THIS invites trouble.

    And then you have things like Muslim docs who were sterilizing non-Muslim patients without their knowledge, or intentionally giving Jewish patients incorrect meds and laughing about it on Facebook later.

    Dr. Mengele was evil, but he WAS a doctor.

    …and therein lay the rub. Not ALL laws are stupid. There are VERY good reasons for many of them.

    These things do need SOME thought so as not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but great lattitude should be given in mass casualty situations. Triage was born from the fact you CAN’T save EVERYBODY. There should be a similar process to broadening the possible treatments and innovations IF a patient is beyond the reach of ESTABLISHED practices anyway, AND you establish consent.

    …but then you get into how lucid the patient is, whether “implied consent” assumptions that the patient will want to live at all cost is valid, if the cure will destroy their quality of life, will they still WANT it, whether a relative WHO MAY NOT HAVE THEIR BEST INTERESTS AT HEART can give consent…

    …see, it’s a mess, because humans SUCK. And deciding these weighty matters as the national house burns down around him while Democrats throw gasoline on it doesn’t help. This is why the President needs our prayers, because it’s all too much for ANY man, but he’s our leader and needs God to guide him to the right answer, there’s simply NO other way to find it.

    Pray for your President. He’s the ONLY one even TRYING to help…

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  7. The death rate in spain is 6.75 percent of those infected.
    If that holds and everyone in the USA gets it, thats 23 million dead.

    We need HCQ+ZPAC now, I mean now.

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  8. …also, you do need to consider some things about how stuff is manufactured, when you talk about medical devices.

    I work in a food plant. Food plants are VERY heavily regulated, have certain cleanliness standards, lots of laws about how things are processed, regulated by the FDA and many others, and do have to prove that they made a safe product at the end of the day for human consumption.

    But for all that, it’s LIGHT YEARS from what a PHARMACEUTICAL plant is.

    If the Government was to come to US tomorrow, a food manufacturer regulated by the FDA and adherent to current food standards and say, “We NEED you to make Coronvirus cures ASAP but with rigid adherence to USP processing and full, arduous compliance with CFR Title 21 subparts 200 on instead of where you NORMALLY operate around Subparts 1-189…

    We. Could. Not. Do. It.

    The laws, the processes, the equipment required, the cleanliness level, the degree of expertise requires of everyone from the process authority to the machine OEM to the grunt on the line is EXPONENTIALLY higher and would take a VERY long time just to determine what was NEEDED to be compliant in terms of equipment and facilities, let ALONE implement it. Here’s a nice view of what’s involved JUST from a regulatory standpoint, if you have trouble sleeping…
    https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm

    …bear in mind that you can’t use one thing to make two things, either. If you devote it to making MEDICINE, you are no longer making FOOD, PLUS you’re not making MEDICINE either, not any time SOON. So, you’ve lost ONE vital thing with only the HOPE of a usable OTHER vital thing somewhere down the line; and anyone who’s ever worked on bringing up a new Production line can tell you, it ain’t happening on SCHEDULE.

    …Also, it’s a BUSINESS, it NEEDS to make money. Virtue and patriotism is fine and all, but we LEASE the buildings and THOSE folks aren’t willing to be paid in virtue and patriotism. Same for machines, people, supplies, etc., usw… EVERYONE wants to get PAID. So, the question becomes, will we get online BEFORE the Government loses interest or someone beats us to it, making our wrenching conversion useless AND unprofitable?

    It’s NOT hypothetical, either. The space WE occupy NOW was once occupied by a competitor. There was a surge in Government business related to Desert Storm. The Company I was later to join (wasn’t there then) increased capacity without investing heavily on new equipment. The competitor purchased the building I’m in and a WHOLE lot of very expensive, shiny, highly advanced technically (for the time) equipment, and settled in to install it and make it work for a BIG payoff later.

    Then Saddam Hussein proved to SUCK at war.

    He lost SO quickly, the Government dropped all the juicy contracts that they built the new place on, before they ever made a usable component for the war in it. Desert Storm was NO WWII, and the dreams of our competitor of making WWII money burned up faster than the Iraqi tanks at 73 Easting.

    …Long story somewhat shorter, they failed, lost the plant and equipment, and we bought it for a song much later, and WE still exist, and they DON’T.

    Because of a hasty leap for a National Emergency.

    …now, GM isn’t going to fail like that, not if Democrats have anything to say about it, but they do NOT have expertise making medical devices. They will have a learning curve, installation issues, training issues, regulatory issues, just as WE would trying to make the leap from a NON medical thing to a MEDICAL thing, and if you get too wavery, it will probably KILL people, which is the OPPOSITE of what is intended. Too, will the malaria cure make the retooling for respirators unnecessary and unprofitable before the plant ever makes a SINGLE ONE?

    …Maaaybe…

    …and will the Government still PURCHASE them, if so?

    …Maybe NOT…

    …see, it’s easy to SAY to “DO SOMETHING!!!”.

    …ACTUALLY doing something is a different proposition ENTIRELY.

    …not saying you don’t TRY…

    …just saying you need to make SURE you don’t make things WORSE…

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