[schuetze]

Perhaps this is aimed at non-American healthcare systems, but I have not seen a single report of American hospitals running out of ventilators, let alone BiPaP machines. In order for this to be a responsible hack — used under the guidance of medical professionals — we would need to have run out of both.

If anything, at least in the American context, I'm more worried about running out of the sedative necessary for ventilation.[1]

I have nothing against hardware hacking in non-pandemics. If you want to hack your own insulin pump or create epi-pens on your own (non-crisis) time, that's fine by me.

But I think the cost-benefit-risk analysis changes in pandemics, because people are too hungry for easy fixes and make ill-advised decisions under pressure. For example, even doctors (ostensibly medically-literate professionals) are prescribing themselves hydrochloroquine [2], which does not seem to be a miracle cure and sometimes, itself, dangerous (and also leaves lupus sufferers at risk of a disrupted supply chain).

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/6/21209589/coronavirus-medicine-v...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/health/chloroquine-corona...

[hombre_fatal]

> but I have not seen a single report of American hospitals running out of ventilators

Are you really not going to just google "USA ventilator shortage"?

Also BiPaP machines require the same hack as CPAP machines. And of course a further hack for invasive intubation (which ventilators can do out of the box), though you aren't going to do that to your nightstand CPAP machine either.

Anyways, rest assured that the few people who can be bothered to jailbreak their CPAP machine are not the same kind of people who drink their koi pond cleaner. I think this kind of fear about people hacking their gadgets is misplaced.

It also reeks of what I can only register as this weird "doc knows best" subservience to the medical system. This is probably the weirdest meme I see on HN. And, as people upstream point out, nobody out there is paying attention to your insulin pump or CPAP machine settings. They just leave it on whatever default setting. It's all entirely on you to do the research to improve things for you.

[tptacek]

The search you propose doesn't rebut their comment. We're all aware of the concern about shortages. Their claim was different.

There are stories about NYT hospitals doubling up patients on ventilators, but those stories are explicit about the fact that those hospitals have not run out of vents, and are instead working out the protocols for sharing them when/if it becomes necessary.

[gowld]

To be clear, your position is that we should eschew self care so that we can bankrupt ourselves by only getting care from doctors, who as you note are either hoarding critical medicines for themselves or using wrong medicine for treatment?