[Ninjak8051]

The handwaving arguments in this letter are not convincing (especially the "You do also understand that, as long as the rate of increase is exponential, no linear solution to contrast it will work (I.e. increasing x times the number of ICU machines, etc.)" nonsense). The stats in this very letter indicate that 10% of patients require ventilators, which cost about $4000. So even if the entire population were sick at the same time, would need population * 0.1 ventilators, at a cost of $400 per resident.

The fact that we haven't spent $400 per resident to stockpile ventilators is a failure of society and a failure of government. The economic damage over these next few weeks will be far, far greater than $400 per resident.

[scarmig]

We've stockpiled some number of ventilators in the USA (though still likely insufficient for the task at hand). The bigger issue is the labor needed to staff them, which has very limited scalability.

I wonder how hard it is, and how quickly a moderately intelligent person could be brought up to speed (at least enough to get better outcomes than just leaving the patient to die).

[cobookman]

If you take every potential apocalyptic scenario and stockpile supplies. It’d add up to much more than 400$/resident.

The real shame is globalization. If manufacturing occurred in Europe. In North America...etc. we’d all just quickly ramp up our respirator production.

Instead the west outsourced this to China

[stblack]

This is only the first part of the problem.

The second part is, optimized supply chains that are effectively as empty as possible, all the time.

Here in Canada an 18-day rail blockade by native bands was enough to cause serious concerns in the supply of propane and other fuels in the eastern part of the country.

It's shocking that eastern half of Canada, the majority of its population, faces winters with just 3-weeks supply of fuel. The reason? Nobody wants to carry inventory.

So for many things, we outsource creation, AND we optimize-away buffer stock.