[pal_9000]

How realistic would it be for someone to be able to make a business out of it at this moment? The problem I would see and described in the article is quality assurance. But I believe this could go a really long way in helping with ventilator shortage that could very well be inevitable.

[teruakohatu]

In the USA? Zero chance, unless a state of emergency makes accommodations I am not aware of. If one failed, due to not spending a lot of money and time doing quality control and getting certifications, and a patient died you would be sued out of existance.

In New Zealand you generally can't due for punative damages and lawsuits for medical misadventure are few to non-existent then maybe, but I am sure red tape would still prevent it.

Maybe it could be sold as a non-medical device, call it a "Happy Fun Breathing Simulator" with no explicit purpose and people would stock up on then.

[radicalbyte]

In Italy they're literally letting people who are 70+ die because of lack of respirators.

In this situation you're better off just building a lot more of these than you'd need and monitoring. Replace failed units.

[fbn79]

This is totally false. Hospitals in North Italy are at full work and respirators are constantly added. No one in need of respirator is left without. The very high death rate (6%+) is attributable to the fact that people with mild or no symptoms is rarely tested so we have a lot of positives, but in good state, missing from the stats. Half of country hospitals have little o no one infected people and is available to bring help to more hitten north. Who think that Italy is let people die unassisted is totally wrong. Italy is giving the full priority to save lives, even older ones, paying the price of destroying it's already not in good state economy.

[adrianmonk]

A few days back, there was a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") thread with a UK doctor who mentioned a similar situation in Italy. Here's the thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fgfspi/im_a_cr...

The doctor says:

> Italy exceeded their critical care capacity days ago.

...

> This is the first time I have seen guidelines in a first world country suggest that older patients (who have survivable illness) are not considered for intubation and ventilation in order to allow capacity to treat younger patients.

It isn't clear that the situation got so bad that they actually needed to make these kinds of hard choices, but the thread links to a document with guidelines in case it's necessary. And apparently those guidelines do include considering age when choosing who not to treat, should such a situation arise.

From a machine translation (the original is Italian) posted further down in that same thread:

> Recommendations

> *3. It may be necessary to place an age limit on entry into TI. It is not a question of making choices merely of value, but to reserve resources that could be very scarce for those who are primarily more likely to survival and secondarily to those who can have more years of life saved, with a view to maximizing of benefits for most people.

[fbn79]

In italy we are not to the point to have to choose which patient to save. Italy critical care capacity was 2500. Now increased, and we are fighting to increase it fasten than necesity (downing virus growing curve). Please see thi Lancet pubblication https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...