Company Spends $25M Building Ventilators That Are Now No Longer Needed (reuters.com) 113
U.K. vacuum cleaner company Dyson "said the British government no longer needed the ventilator it had developed from scratch," reports Reuters:
Company founder James Dyson said the company had welcomed Prime Minister Boris Johnson's challenge to build ventilators. "Mercifully they are not required, but we don't regret our contribution to the national effort for one moment," he said in a statement.
Dyson said his company had spent around 20 million pounds ($25 million) on the project to date, and would not accept any public money. "I have some hope that our ventilator may yet help the response in other countries, but that requires further time and investigation," he said.
Dyson said his company had spent around 20 million pounds ($25 million) on the project to date, and would not accept any public money. "I have some hope that our ventilator may yet help the response in other countries, but that requires further time and investigation," he said.
Somebody else said: (Score:1, Interesting)
5 Trillion$ worth of rockets, nukes, planes, bombers and carriers were bought and never needed.
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The point of building those nukes and bombers was so they would never have to be used. The reason for having overwhelming force is to avoid a big world war, so I guess we can say "Mission Accomplished".
That is, and always has been, completely nonsensical circular logic.
"We have overwhelming force, so we don't need to use it."
"Wait, the other guys now have overwhelming force too."
"Oh, I guess we'll have to double the size of our force."
"Ok, they just made their force more overwhelming as well."
Where does this lead? It does not take a genius to figure it out.
Re: Somebody else said: (Score:2, Insightful)
That is, and always has been, completely nonsensical
There's nothing nonsensical or circular about the idea that being scary, or at least appearing scary, helps prevent attacks. Both approaches can be commonly seen in Nature across a wide variety of life forms.
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There's a reason why everyone stays the fuck out of North Korea's business, where as countless countries in the Middle East and other parts of the world have been invaded by the world's superpowers. If nuclea
Re: Somebody else said: (Score:1)
One canâ(TM)t talk about deterrence when one is actively invading other countries & influencing or financing the destruction of other.
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There's a reason why everyone stays the fuck out of North Korea's business
Yep, because it's a sucking chest wound of a shithole that no-one would want even if they were given it. A very effective deterrent, but not something that most countries would want to do to themselves.
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Yeah, and monkeys fling shit to prevent attacks. I know it's hard to tell, but we have decided (most of us, anyway) that's not an effective or appropriate solution for humans to use.
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> That is, and always has been, completely nonsensical
I wonder if he says the same thing about reserve ventilators.
Re: Somebody else said: (Score:2)
It leads to the economic collapse of one of the players, a nation built on criminality and corruption; and global domination by the other player, a nation built on liberty and overconfidence.
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The point of building those nukes and bombers was so they would never have to be used. The reason for having overwhelming force is to avoid a big world war, so I guess we can say "Mission Accomplished".
You could have done that with $1 trillion. Also I guess you can stop spending more than every other nation combined on your military now that you've stopped all wars. /sarcasm while crying.
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The point of building those nukes and bombers was so they would never have to be used. The reason for having overwhelming force is to avoid a big world war, so I guess we can say "Mission Accomplished".
And that's worked so well in every previous war ever.
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Re:Somebody else said: (Score:5, Insightful)
We used nukes every year of the cold war, and still use them occasionally today. Fortunately, we used them the better way, by not launching them, and since the cold war ended we've gotten rid of around 90% of them.
The Cold war was a very risk thing, but the fact is, there has never been a large scale war since we nuked Japan. Nations have squabbled by proxy in third-world nations, because some people just can't stop fighting, but that stupidity was channeled into conflicts that didn't escalate and were much, much less harmful than the first half of the 20th century.
So, money well spent, compared to the vast devastation a third world war, even a conventional one, would have wrought.
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Too soon to write the verdict in my opinion. Almost 80 whole years into the nuclear era, and mankind hasn't wiped itself out yet. It's just not a very long time in the grand scheme of things.
But, passing judgment on physics is kind of silly. Even without WWII and the USA the wold would have nuclear bombs by now.
Re:Somebody else said: (Score:5, Informative)
5 Trillion$ worth of rockets, nukes, planes, bombers and carriers were bought and never needed.
Military research pushes technology in general, such as aviation and shipbuilding. Even the nuclear bombs themselves twere recycled:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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5 Trillion$ worth of rockets, nukes, planes, bombers and carriers were bought and never needed.
Only five???
Re: Somebody else said: (Score:2)
Keep them for the next pandemic... (Score:2)
Re:Keep them for the next pandemic... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we learned one thing with this current crisis, it's that stockpiling PPE, ventilators, and other items needed to respond to a crisis like this is very, very important.
Rather than be surprised and scramble to find ventilators next time (and there will be a next time), why not build up the devices and sell them to countries for their national stockpile? Their effort will not be for naught unless they choose to walk away from their investment.
Re:Keep them for the next pandemic... (Score:4, Insightful)
If we learned one thing with this current crisis, it's that stockpiling PPE, ventilators, and other items needed to respond to a crisis like this is very, very important.
But what if we spend all of our resources stockpiling those instead of what's most needed for the next crisis? Sure some stuff like PPE is generally useful and it probably wouldn't take too much effort for everyone to get enough masks, etc. to last themselves for 3 months without having to buy more, but ventilators cost considerably more and are no where near as easy to store. There was a post in a story yesterday that said doctors in Chicago were having better success using a less-invasive approach compared to ventilators. Maybe we don't even need what we have now.
The real need is to have a manufacturing base (and a government willing to remove legal barriers to its operation) that is able to quickly respond to needs and has procedures in place that ensure it will be able to continue to operate during an emergency. Anything else is just a Maginot Line that looks great in theory, but is quickly shown to be obsolete when events play out in a manner other than anticipated. Having a good government policy in place to assuage a lot of the short-term economic fears and uncertainty ahead of time so that Congress can't play politics and stuff in their own pork would be nice as well.
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>"The real need is to have a manufacturing base (and a government willing to remove legal barriers to its operation) that is able to quickly respond to needs and has procedures in place that ensure it will be able to continue to operate during an emergency. "
Indeed.
"Centralized planning" by government generally doesn't work well. In fact, it usually makes things worse. A vibrant economy with healthy and free companies can jump into action far better than some planning committee. Hundreds of businesses
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"Centralized planning" by government generally doesn't work well.
Centralized planning works incredibly well in certain situations, just like decentralized planning works in others. In times of immediate crisis, I feel it's clear centralized planning is the way to go. During WW2 the US didn't just wait for companies to innovate and create the weapons they felt were right for the war effort. We created the War Powers Act to give the US government the ability to "incentivize" companies to prioritize manufacturing based on the needs of the war effort.
The US economy's relianc
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>Companies should have been forced to manufacture necessary equipment in early February
We should have never allowed companies to export manufacturing of critical equipment to begin with.
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Not exactly that though, more general approach (Score:5, Insightful)
If we learned one thing with this current crisis, it's that stockpiling PPE, ventilators, and other items needed to respond to a crisis like this is very, very important.
A bad general is always fighting the last war.
Isn't the meta-thing to learn here, that its really really important to be able to produce something en-masse locally, without being reliant of foreign supplies to produce something?
We don't know the next problem will require ventilators per-se. What we do know is the ability to scale manufacturing incredibly rapidly is of huge value, as has been shown in a few cases like this story - even though we didn't need the ventilators produced this time, that ability to quickly craft so many specialized items is a good sign.
It seems like what we need to do is take stock of supply chains and maybe widen out each nations strategic stock piles raw materials for things like PPE, or medical sterilization in general. Then we have flexibility in responding to whatever comes down the pike, in whatever location it hits.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo! Stockpiling ventilators by the million (and presumably having to pay for and maintain them) is about like cranking out 100,000 Sherman Tanks in case we have to invade Germany again.
What we *should* have learned was that *national* and *personal* self-reliance is critical. Relying on complex global supply chains and JIT delivery is foolish and leaves each nation and individual completely helpless to even minor disruptions.
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Having a small to moderate reserve right now does seem like a good idea. There are talks of 2nd waves and there could be a sudden flare-up in relatively unaffected areas/countries.
Once this passes, we can probably dole out some of the excess to other countries as foreign aid. I'm not entirely sure of the quality level of these new ventilators, but there's probably some third world country that will take them.
Long term is to have quick-production designs of needed devices/machines, preferably something tha
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Actually, most medical equipment is horribly archaic anyway. It's the ridiculous, complicated, and expensive certification process that came about as another (almost) knee-jerk reaction. While some parts of it are good, preventing substandard design and quality equipment from taking lives, it equally vastly raises the cost and immensely slows development of everything around it.
Fundamental problem is healthcare is for-(corporate)profit in the USA.
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I totally agree, and this is one of those ideas that should be apolitical.
It's like with oil. If the US was smart, we would keep a bit of oil as strategic reserves in salt mines or whatever, but then keep the majority of it in the ground. Let Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, pump themselves dry, and we'll buy all they have to sell. Let them stab each other in the back with OPEC violations. We should be happy to pay an extra $15 a barrel to not use domestic oil as that is such a small price to p
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The problem is that fracking right now is what is damaging Russia and others' economies and therefore political power. If they control most of the world's oil, that gives them serious leverage over other nations.
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I hear you, and wish that the leaders of these countries were truly negatively affected by things like falling oil prices, sanctions, and the rest. But truth is they are totally insulated:
Time in power
Putin 20+ years
Chavez/Maduro 20+ years
House of Saud 88+ yrs
Iranian regime 41+ years
I still think the way is to let them exhaust their supplies feeding China & the US. Make them start spending increasingly more as the oil is harder come by.
A theme of the current conversation is that the US-mentality us
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In fact, it would make sense to pay the shale producers to maintain their idle equipment and skeletal management, and to have procedures in place for rapid hiring if needed.
Oil would not be $30 a barrel without the OPEC cartel artificially limiting production raise the price. Without the cartel, oil will not reach a price that covers the cost of shale production.
But without shale production, OPEC can go to the full monopoly price.
As such, it makes sense to be able to turn shale back on, which, combined wi
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The oil industry is not something where you just 'turn on the spigot' to shift to local production. Maintaining huge oil fields and all the related industry that aren't producing anything is enormously expensive. For perspective, the ocean drilling rigs run about a half billion dollars each. You can't simply use a fleet of them to prospect a bunch of wells and call it a day without ever generating a profit.
Then there's the distribution chain. Refineries. Storage. Manpower.
Also, did you suggest we also
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A bad general is always fighting the last war. [...] We don't know the next problem will require ventilators per-se.
We do know that ventilators are one of the things we will need for a significant number of possible pandemics we are likely to see in the next century. We should have a greater stockpile, and should have had them for the past few decades. None of this is hindsight; we have known about the danger of pandemics for a while.
But to your point we should also be proactive about the other major and nearly certain disaster scenarios as well. Viral pandemics, climate change, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and mass mi
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It's good to have a domestic manufacturing capacity. We do have manufacturing capacity of vents in the US. We didn't have enough to meet the sudden, and completely predictable, demand.
It's more cost effective to stockpile things that you know you're going to need than to expect to retool for mass production things that you'll need to just ship out to a crisis area.
The right answer for this problem was to have the needed equipment stockpiled, in this case, PPE and vents. And in the vents case, properly maint
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We won't build a stockpile (Score:2, Troll)
Obama tried to stock pile them but the company he tapped to do it was bought out by a larger one and the project was shelved. By the time there was a chance to find another company Trump was in office. He ignored the Obama era pandemic playbook.
The same thing happened with PPE. The companies making this stuff don't _want_ it stockpiled. They're profiting like crazy right now with the states in a bidding war. You can find stories online ab
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You can find stories online about this, including ones that indicate Trump's own people, maybe even his own family, are profiteering.
I couldn't find any of these stories (save the ones about Trump's financial interest in a mutual fund that has small pharma holdings). [snopes.com]
Can you provide a link to one of these stories you speak of? Thanks!
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What we learned is that nuclear bombs are far more effective for "putting down" a virus than anything else. No need to stockpile medical equipment, as we have all the sanitizer we are ever likely to need...
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I think more accurately, what we learned is too much of the world - from food supply, to PPE, to personal income - lives and dies by too fine a margin.
(ok, except the very wealthy...they're the cause of above)
We shouldn't just rely on some magic government stockpile (of what though? what if next up we need bulldozers and wreckers after a massive earthquake takes down half of san francisco) but instead industries, companies, and individuals should have the ability to hedge against disaster needs and not jus
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FTFY.
FTFY, too. You really need to proofread better.
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The coronavirus wasn't the pandemic that the experts were expecting.
How do you know? It's not over yet.
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It is over. About 20% of Americans are already infected (50% of Europeans). The hospitals are empty and the doctors and nurses are bored with nothing to do.
Dr Erickson on Covid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The viruses just have to fall over and stink still and then the fat lady can sing.
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Isn't he relying on anecdotal evidence from his chain of urgent care facilities?
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I wouldn't worry if I were Dyson, they could sell it to America in a few weeks once they "open the country up".
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We have a ventilator surplus over here, too.
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Some African countries only have 3 ventilators for the whole country. So the "no longer needed" in the headline not only fails to consider the value of having them in stock next time (per parent thread), but also isn't considering the same world-scale playing field as the coronavirus is.
Article in The Atlantic ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]
Small cost in the scope of things. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're still in the middle of this. We still don't know the reinfection rate either.
Remember - the game strategy for this little game has always been 'flattening the curve' - that is, making sure that the maximum needed resources don't exceed available in ways that kill millions at once.
The ventilators were a grim insurance - and many are being used now.
They're not SUPPOSED to be the best tool for the job - rather, they're there in the case when doctors are in extremely short supply and you just need to keep a large population just breathing with minimal manpower until triage practices can get to them.
In the scope of things, $25 million in extra equipment across a nation is hardly a waste. It is, and remains a contingency cost, well worth the effort.
Ryan Fenton
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reinfection rate is essentially zero, there is no evidence whatsoever this virus would somehow be magically different from the other similar ones. In fact a very educated guess, based on similar viruses, would be antibodies would be effective for almost 3 years at least.
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reinfection rate is essentially zero, there is no evidence whatsoever this virus would somehow be magically different from the other similar ones. In fact a very educated guess, based on similar viruses, would be antibodies would be effective for almost 3 years at least.
Yes, but we are still in the middle of this. Even assuming the majority of infected people were asymptomatic and never accounted for, less than 1 or 2% of the population (American at least) has been infected. States are starting to loosen up restrictions now. In the flu of 1917/1918, the biggest infection wasn't the initial one but the second wave that happened after people got sick of isolating and went out an celebrated the end of WW2 instead. People now are protesting isolating restrictions. We may see t
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Antibody tests would prove some things, a week ago it was reported in New York city one in five had antibodies, and perhaps then virus not as deadly as thought... and those people should be able to go to work and not need distancing.
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The UK government doesn't need the ventilators Dyson designed. It doesn't 'mean no one else does. There are plenty of places that still need ventilators and plenty of those places will be happy to buy the ones Dyson invested money in making.
So no, Dyson is not in any trouble - they'll find another buyer soon enough.
Why even consider giving them public money (Score:2)
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"Sir James Dyson, the companys billionaire founder, said the company had already spent around 20m on the project but would not be seeking any public money to cover its costs."
(from The Guardian [theguardian.com] ).
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They aren't asking for money because they LOUDLY announced the UK gov had asked them to make ventilators and given them a contract, both of which were denied by the gov! Our current government are undeniably liars and incompetents, perfectly capable of giving misleading messages to one of their supporters, despite that no one here believes Dysons version.
Self promotion that went bad for Dyson. While other companies were quietly (relatively) collaborating to maximize delivery, with or without gov support, Dy
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... it is already covered by R&D write off.
Sure. But then you have to (Score:2)
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The statement was made to forestall comments like yours.
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Your taxes being spent poorly in other instances is no excuse to spend more of them poorly in this one.
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JFC you're being deliberately off-topic. You're bringing a total non-starter into the discussion - go read the article slowly and carefully, it's clear that you're a speed-reader.
They could always peddle them as (Score:2)
refurbs with a shorter warranty if they can't get their normal, abnormally high price for them...
$25M is the cost of five 30-second Superbowl ads (Score:5, Interesting)
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This. Dyson's revenue was 4.4bn GBP last year. It's a nice soundbyte that he isn't accepting public money but the entire company should be absolutely crucified if they did.
This was little more than a media campaign. Honestly, most people's efforts are, beyond say maybe GE who actually know how to build them and what they are supposed to do.
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If they responded to the call, and rushed to build 25 million $ worth of ventilators, needed or not, the least they deserve is good will and publicity for doing so.
Re:$25M is the cost of five 30-second Superbowl ad (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to have worked too based in the reaction I'm seeing here.
People have forgotten that Dyson moved manufacturing out of the UK to Singapore, supported brexit and their products are way overpriced.
By the way if you need a good vacuum cleaner then a Xiaomi Jimmy is 99% as good for about 30% of the price.
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"supported brexit"
Oh, dear, the animals!
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In 30 years time there'll be people spitting on graves, going, "He supported Brexit."
It's a bit like people in Manchester that have never even seen a coal mine bitching about Margaret Thatcher for closing the mines, not even realising she closed fewer mines than the Labour Governments that preceded her.
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What do experts know? (Score:1)
What do experts know? More than you. Don't need but have is better than don't have but need. As you can tell, I am not a Fox News worshipper.
But has this conundrum been considered by anyone?
If, as is being suggested by the experts, being exposed+recovered from Covid-19 does not mean you can't get infected again (over any time frame, never mind for life), does that not imply "The Vaccine" if ever created ... won't work? Forever in Covid-19 blue jeans?
I expect replies from only the experts.
I don't like Dyson (Score:3)
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What makes you think their products which consistently outperform all others "don't work as well"? I mean every testing group ever would disagree with you.
Now as to if someone actually needs to spend half a grand on a vacuum and several hundred pounds on a fan from a company that built its reputation on soundbytes and stealing other people's ideas ... yep I don't really like them either. I can't argue that they don't make damn good products though.
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They don't outperform though
Except they do. Consumer Reports a long with many other independent tests show that they very much continue to perform best in class.
Brands like Shark and Miele consistently outperform Dyson
No they match them at best and that shouldn't be a surprise since they are in the same price range. I guess you should mention then that Shark and Miele make overpriced shit too?
Given how unreliable Dyson vacuums are
Also not born out in the statistics, and even if it were, loss of suction is a warranty claim. Why didn't you act on it given the company voluntarily has a warranty period far longer than standard?
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Wait until Shark comes out with their ventilator design.
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In other words, Dyson ventilators suck.
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To be fair Dyson do make blood good vacuum cleaners. They are unbeatable for cleaning ability and exhaust filtration. But they are also very expensive and have some design flaws.
I've switched to Xiaomi Jimmy instead. They are 99% as good but a small fraction of the price. I'm glad someone else is finally offering something competitive with Dyson because for some reason all the other manufacturers seem to be hopelessly incompetent.
Cabin Fever (Score:2)
Wait until the masses break out of quarantine and abandon caution due to emotional pressure. THEN decide if the vents are unnecessary.
That said, there has been considerable debate about the harm vents can cause many patients. The heme-attack angle is still being understood.
$25M is a trifle, some yachts cost more. (Score:2)
What makes $25M impressive?
Given that it’s Dyson (Score:3)
$25 million likely only covers the cost of maybe a dozen ventilators.
short-sighted propaganda (Score:2)
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Numbers of people in hospital with COVID19 are on a long downward trend in the UK. ICU bed usage is currently only running at about 50% capacity and the trend there is also downwards.
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Ventilators aren't helping much (Score:4, Insightful)
We're starting to discover that ventilators aren't improving oxygen saturation in many cases. Also, the survival rate of intubated patients is a poor 14%.
Physicians were treating Coronavirus with similar protocols to pneumonia but it's being discovered that Covid-19 is a very differently-behaving virus. In many cases (more often than not) the patients don't even exhibit fever.
There remains a lot to be learned about the behavior and treatment of Covid-19. It's something we've never experienced and is quite unique in its behavior.
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The large asymptomatic cohort neither need or get treatment. Unfortunately without good testing and contact tracing they're free to spread the disease, hopefully slower than symptomatic carriers.
If you reach the stage of needing intubation your lungs already have life threatening damage and low survival rates shouldn't be surprising.
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Not needed? (Score:2)
It's not that they are not needed, it's that they haven't been used. Not the same thing. The government has simply let people die in care homes or their own homes rather than treating them, and there aren't enough NHS staff now in any case as so many of them are off sick due to a lack of protective equipment.
Thatâ(TM)s nothing.... (Score:2)
Not the whole story (Score:2)
So it's not that the UK doesn't need more ventilators (although the requirement is less than first thought), it's that the UK doesn't need Dyson's untested, unapproved, ventilators. (src [bbc.co.uk]).