quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
I'm curious, what is the end game here?

Are we not letting anyone out until the virus is totally eradicated? As soon as the leash is off people are going to go back to normal life, or are we going to have to spend the rest of our lives 6' away from everyone else?

If there is even a few infected people out there this starts all over again. Are we going to go back to normal for 3 weeks and lock down for 6 again?

I’m hoping we hit on a antiviral that shows high efficacy. Fujifilm and Gilead Science each have trials running that should give us some answers in 6-8 weeks.

quote:

Fujifilm .....each have trials running

This warms my heart. I'm cheering for some Fujichrome winning! For old time sake.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:...

That's the entire problem right now. If people would just follow safe social interaction practices, none of this shutting-down of things and extreme social distancing measures would be necessary. But they don't. And my bet is, once the restrictions are removed, they still won't....

Tell us, what then is acceptable in this "new world" we will find ourselves?

Do we allow nature and civilization to find the "natural leveling", or do we let the overlords dictate what, when, where, and how people are to live in this brave new world?

One thing I have learned of people. We tend to be kind and accommodating when things are good and plentiful, but once true hardship and want coming into play, there are a great number of people that will become the most ruthless and cunning of survivors, and make no mistake when that time comes, the threat of some "wee virus thingy", crawling up your bunghole, will be the best that you could expect.

I have seen the absolute best of people and the absolute worst of people.

And the recipe for bringing out the latter is found to have large quantities of trying to control the free will of those who will survive.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:...

That's the entire problem right now. If people would just follow safe social interaction practices, none of this shutting-down of things and extreme social distancing measures would be necessary. But they don't. And my bet is, once the restrictions are removed, they still won't....

Tell us, what then is acceptable in this "new world" we will find ourselves?

It's not a question of what is "acceptable." It's a question of what we have to do to avoid becoming infected and infecting others. Not unlike the things we learned to do centuries ago, when some bright individual connected the dots and discovered rats spread disease, so we needed to control the rat population. Well, some of us, anyway. Some cultures, not so much.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:...

That's the entire problem right now. If people would just follow safe social interaction practices, none of this shutting-down of things and extreme social distancing measures would be necessary. But they don't. And my bet is, once the restrictions are removed, they still won't....

Tell us, what then is acceptable in this "new world" we will find ourselves?

It's not a question of what is "acceptable." It's a question of what we have to do to avoid becoming infected and infecting others. Not unlike the things we learned to do centuries ago, when some bright individual connected the dots and discovered rats spread disease, so we needed to control the rat population. Well, some of us, anyway. Some cultures, not so much.

I think the Monkey is trying to point out that some rats are less controllable than others, particularly hungry rats.

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:...

That's the entire problem right now. If people would just follow safe social interaction practices, none of this shutting-down of things and extreme social distancing measures would be necessary. But they don't. And my bet is, once the restrictions are removed, they still won't....

Tell us, what then is acceptable in this "new world" we will find ourselves?

It's not a question of what is "acceptable." It's a question of what we have to do to avoid becoming infected and infecting others. Not unlike the things we learned to do centuries ago, when some bright individual connected the dots and discovered rats spread disease, so we needed to control the rat population. Well, some of us, anyway. Some cultures, not so much.

I think the Monkey is trying to point out that some rats are less controllable than others, particularly hungry rats.

Ok. Fine. But I wasn't suggesting anybody be controlled in the first place. I was suggesting that, unless people learned to control themselves, the infection rate will more than likely just ramp right back up.

https://www.breitbart.com/heal...ighting-coronavirus/

Doctors who have treated a combined total of over 425 confirmed or presumptive Chinese coronavirus patients with the drug hydroxychloroquine told Breitbart News they are finding the medication to be helpful.

The doctors stressed that more long-term studies are needed to draw concrete scientific conclusions about hydroxychloroquine and Chinese coronavirus. But they said they decided to act because they felt it was safe and because the coronavirus pandemic does not leave any time to wait for what could be months or even years of clinical trials.

Their experiences are not meant to be taken as controlled scientific trials. Studies are clearly required to more conclusively determine whether the hydroxychloroquine indeed played a role in patient recovery or whether those same patients would have recovered anyway without the medication.

Some of the doctors interviewed for this article prescribed hydroxychloroquine along with zinc sulfate, and in many cases combined the drug with an antibiotic regimen

The hydroxychloroquine sulfate is thought to serve as a key to force open internal cell channels, including those susceptible to coronavirus, allowing the zinc to penetrate and help line the intracellular walls to protect against coronavirus penetration. The antibiotic is meant to act against any secondary infection brought on by the coronavirus attack.

The doctors interviewed for this article practice in the hard-hit areas of New York or New Jersey. They say none of their patients experienced strong side effects from the medication cocktail.

The hydroxychloroquine treatment is not believed to kill coronavirus. Instead it could protect cellular lining from further penetration. This could mean that if it does work, the drug cocktail would likely have more success in patients who are in the early or middle stages of infection and would be less effective in those who are already in critical condition. Indeed, that is what the doctors say they have been finding.

Breitbart News also spoke with numerous patients treated by the doctors, who claim the drug helped them to recover.

“This is battlefield medicine and the use of real time frontline assessment,” said Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who practices family medicine with mostly ultra-Orthodox Jewish patients near the Orange County, New York, village of Kiryas Joel. The tightknit community has seen a deluge of coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

Zelenko has been prescribing a treatment plan of 200mg of hydroxychloroquine twice a day for 5 days, Azithromycin 500mg antibiotics once a day for 5 days, and 220mg of Zinc sulfate once a day for 5 days.

He said that he selected about 200 high-risk patients to receive the hydroxychloroquine cocktail and about nearly 150 took the drugs. Six of his patients were admitted to hospitals. Two of those admitted were intubated, and four are recovering on intravenous antibiotics

Dr. Rosy E. Joseph is a nephrologist in Hackensack, New Jersey, and has been practicing for 30 years.

Joseph told Breitbart News that she treated between 50 and 60 presumptive and confirmed coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine. Her regimen differs somewhat from that of Zelenko in that she combines the drug with Vitamins C and D, along with zinc.

Joseph said that she believes the regimen is most likely helping. She said only one patient was hospitalized, an elderly individual who was already seriously ill by the time hydroxychloroquine was administered. That patient went to the hospital the next day.

Joseph said she has not seen evidence of serious side effects from the prescribed
cocktail.

A third doctor, Hillel Isseroff, is an internist in Brooklyn, New York, affiliated with NYU Langone Hospitals and Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital. He has been treating coronavirus patients in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, which has also experienced a massive influx due to the pandemic.

Isseroff told Breitbart News that he is currently analyzing data from the more than 225 coronavirus patients that he treated using hydroxychloroquine. His overall assessment is that he feels the medication might be effective if it is started early , from onset of the symptoms.

Isseroff had been prescribing hydroxychloroquine along with Azithromycin 250mg tablets in select coronavirus patients who were considered high risk. He has also been suggesting zinc early in the illness.

Besides the doctors quoted in this article, Breitbart News is aware of other physicians and even New York hospitals treating coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine.

Some of the doctors asked that their names be withheld from publication. They each reported generally positive results from prescribing hydroxychloroquine, but stressed that their cases do not represent controlled scientific trials.

One doctor, a renowned oncologist on the upper east side of Manhattan, has admitting privileges to hospitals in that area. He told Breitbart News he is aware of one major upper east side hospital that is officially using the hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin combination to treat coronavirus patients. He says that the hospital is finding the cocktail to be working “quite well” in patients who are not admitted in critical condition.

A pulmonary specialist affiliated with a second New York hospital using hydroxychloroquine reported positive results, but asked that Breitbart News wait for an official comment from the hospital before printing the name of the major health institution.

Hydroxychloroquine has been discussed on Fox News and conservative media while many left-leaning news media outlets have been repeatedly singling out one case of an Arizona man who attempted to self-treat with a toxic fish tank cleaner that contained poisonous ingredients such as chloroquine phosphate, a different form from the prescribed drug, and reportedly died as a result.

The implication is that hydroxychloroquine, which has been prescribed for decades, is somehow deadly.

When covering Trump touting the drug, many media outlets also repeatedly restate the fact that hydroxychloroquine is an “unproven” drug for coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine is obviously unproven given that the pandemic only began less than three months ago. Holding enough clinical trials would take many months or even years.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


we are hearing a lot that the hydroxychloroquine mix is helping, but more in the early stages of the disease. Zelenko emphasized that once the lung damage was done, the cocktail mix couldn't help.

we still haven't heard a major hospital stepping up in favor

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:... But I wasn't suggesting anybody be controlled in the first place. I was suggesting that, unless people learned to control themselves, the infection rate will more than likely just ramp right back up.

Since you have been very prolific in this thread, I am asking what you believe needs to be the "new norm/acceptable" behaviors of people. And if people do not abide by the "new behaviors", what is acceptable and expected enforcement, laws, and such in order to meet the "controls" you believe to be the status quo in the "new normal" world.

I am weary of all the pussyfooting around that some seem to be doing.

This world wide shit show is getting tiring for many people, and the "snap back" is likely to be more bitter a pill to swallow, than if things would have been permitted to work themselves out organically.

I get it that some folks are afraid to die, but we are all going to die. No one gets off this rock alive (except a few, according to the stories in The Book).

In the past three months, the damage done by man has far exceeded anything this virus has done.
taking the exponential growth of damage of this virus vs the damage that will occur due to the actions of mankind, both continuing as they have been, I will tell you that man will still inflict a greater degree of misery and damage, far beyond this batshit bug. (of which, man brought about either by purposeful means or simply selfish behavior).

Please, prove me wrong.

You do not know how wrong I wish to be found on this.

End game ?

Everyone wears N95 masks in public. All restaurants go to carryout/drive through with chik-fil- a speed and quality or better. Individual sealed family dining booths. But the schools will still spread it.
So, does everyone have their estate plans and final arrangements made ? The Democrats are only an election away from 100
% inheritance tax cause you didn't earn it

End game: Once we are well on the backside of the flattened curve, and enough people in the US have gotten the virus and recovered from it (60%-70% herd immunity) then things will go back to normal. This herd immunity coupled with a successful vaccine and treatment drugs will let us go back to normal. We went back to normal after Spanish Flu, and we will after this.

Questions:

1. Will you get the COVID-19 vaccine when it's available? Why or why not?
2. Will you start getting the annual flu vaccine now? Why or why not?

My answers:

1. Yes.
2. I've always gotten the annual flu vaccine.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Well this was nine days ago, and thankfully the various measures seem to have slowed the growth of active cases to the point where they double only every five-and-a-half rather than three or less days. Of course they are still growing towards my calculated threshold of 120,000, though in fact only about 2,000 of 54,000 are currently listed as critical - so 3.7 rather than five percent. Let's say four, and the threshold rises to 150,000 cases the German healthcare system can handle at any point in time.

This theoretically leaves ressources for 96,000 additional cases before we, too, are faced with chosing between patients to give ICU beds. Assuming an average staying time of 14 days in intensive care, this means we could sustain a rate of about 6,800 new infections per day indefinitely. The good news is that so far the peak was a little over 6,900 three days ago - though the lower numbers since then may be because of less testing and reporting on the weekend.

Bad news: Not only has the share of critical cases now risen to 5.9 percent (ca. 3,400 out of 58,000), but we got nearly 6,200 newly established infections yesterday again after the sub-5,000 numbers of previous days - though still on a generally downward trend from the peak of 6,900. Good news: The German Hospital Society estimates that number of ICU beds has now increased from 28,000 to nearly 40,000 nationally, three quarters of which equipped with ventilators by reactivating old devices, procuring new ones, and repurposing some from post-OP recovery rooms etc. Free bed capacity thus still 15-20,000. By now we're starting to take in patients from the Netherlands, which also seem to run into capacity limits; their policy has been similar to the UK's, first letting it run before turning about and also imposing restrictions.

Somebody pointed out the importance of large-scale general testing to establish a proper base for case fatality rate once more. Per this site, the US and Italy have by now exceeded the early mass testing of South Korea, but problems remain in comparison. With the spread somewhat contained, South Korea is testing anybody who shows up, and therefore probably has still the best grasp at distribution in general society. As of yesterday, they had run over 420,000 tests, with nearly 9,900 confirmed infections and 165 deaths (CFR of 1.67 percent).

Still, they have so far tested only about 0.8 percent of the overall population. Italy is a little better at 0.86 after more than 500,000 tests, but AFAIK they are testing only suspected cases admitted to hospital, skewing the results. Authorities suspected some time ago already that the number of infections in the country is about ten times higher than the 110,000 established now. Given that their true CFR (currently given as 11.9 percent) is likely to be higher than South Korea's due to additional deaths occurring in the overwhelmed hospitals, I'd wager that the latter is still missing a lot of cases.

The US is now leading in total numbers of tests at more than 1.1 million, but due to the much larger population has covered only 0.33 percent of it so far. Like Germany, they are also only testing on concrete suspicion; due to our decentralized system, we don't seem to have good total numbers, but there was a statement we ran 350,000 tests last week, about the upper limit of national lab capacities. As the bug is progressively attacking the older demographic after the initial wave of mostly young and fit vacationers - several nursing homes have been hit with sometimes 15 deaths in a week - our CFR is now up to 1.2, too.

However, a good base will probably only be established by extended antibody testing. An initial study on a representative sample of 1,000 in the North Rhine-Westphalia county that was at the center of the first large-scale outbreak here, but now sees a flattening of the case curve, is currently being launched.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
I'm curious, what is the end game here? ..

My assumption is it will be cheap surgical masks to keep our fingers out of our face. Social distancing (not quarantine) and probably a cheap anti-viral like HCQS. And tanker trucks full of Purell.

There'll be some clear studies one we have more data. I think in a month or so we'll have a much bigger base of recovered Americans. And there'll be CDC instructions on how to go back outside and face this thing.

End game?

Well here's what I think/hope for. This thing turns out to be seasonal like the flu and we get through, "the Spike" and infection rates decrease. It's viral and in ways behaves similar to the flu. Every year they try and guess what strains it mutates to and we have an annual Corona shot in addition to the flu shot.

I just hope it happens soon. If it doesn't Alaska is going to be hurting big time. Our 3 major industries are oil, fishing and tourism. Tourism is shut down with travel bans. Even if it started tomorrow, I'm sure a lot of people are going to reconsider being in a floating petri dish with 5,000 of their closest friends and cancel their plans. The commercial fishing fleet is parked right now. Most processing plant workers come from the Philippines and Malaysia, they can't get up here right now. The processing plants are closed, the bots have nowhere to offload to so they're parked. That has far reaching effects outside of Alaska, let's just throw a famine on top of a pandemic and financial meltdown. Now there's a report of an oilfield worker on the North Slope testing positive and they re now working with minimal crews and decreased production.

But what do I know, I'm just a trauma nurse going to work in an N-95 mask every night.

James Woods on Twitter has posted some interesting cell phone videos and security videos that don't seem to be making it onto the news. I don't advocate a racist approach to Chinese folks, but there does seem to a few of them acting "suspiciously."

I don't know if you can imbed a Twitter video like you can YouTube videos:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1244768513199206400

https://twitter.com/i/status/1244215020256280576

https://twitter.com/i/status/1245512162899984384

https://twitter.com/i/status/1245512330030518272

The question Rightwire asks about what is the "end game" is actually the best question yet. Our president says we are to remain in complete lockdown until the end of April. If the curve does flatten by then..what happens?

If we go back to normal there are still thousands of infected people out there, right? I guess they are hoping that the warmer weather will cause this thing to die out as the flu always seems to do. What about next winter?

I'm thinking the end game is tied to finding a reasonably effective vaccine. Like 2000Z says above, it probably won't be 100% effective but better than nothing.

Does everything go back to normal then? Shoot, I don't know but I'm thinking probably not. But I am so thankful Trump is our president, I trust him. I don't say that lightly, I trust him.

quote:

Originally posted by Bassamatic:
Our president says we are to remain in complete lockdown until the end of April. If the curve does flatten by then..what happens?

If we go back to normal there are still thousands of infected people out there, right?

He's said, "Maybe until June" a few times as well. What might happen is a gradual regional shift back into gear for the economy based on reduced hospital caseload, better testing, continued social distance awareness and hygiene, and masking in public as a solution develops as to asymptomatic carriers.

The end game is in November. We will be let out to play for a couple months maybe just weeks before then just before things look as though they might boil over as they will when you lock down millions of people who have never been restricted in this manner before.

Then it will be determined round 2 of the virus which we already have been told is coming will return probably late September early October. Time to issue that stay at home order again. Oh, but wait we have to vote don't we?

Well the secretary of state here in Minnesota has already pulled back the curtain on how that will work. Some polling places will be closed and consolidated to other polling places and mail in ballots will be used extensively. Ballot harvesting, election manipulating.

The end game is to get Trump out of office. Always has been. I think Trump is really frozen in place on this one.

quote:

Trump won't be president next year one way or another

Nancy Pelosi-Janurary 12th

I would sooner take my chances with the Corona (and I'm in the high risk group) than lose my vote because once we lose the ability to choose who our president is that's the end game and game over anyhow.

All these measures aren’t with the intention of making the disease go away because that’s never going to happen. They are intended—rightly or wrongly—to help prevent a spike that would overwhelm the medical system and result in people dying who could be saved otherwise.

Something I recently posted in another thread:

The purpose of all these measures, personal and government-mandated, is to slow the rate of infection, not to prevent it entirely. There are two reasons to do that. The first is to allow time to develop treatments for the disease, and even a vaccine. Vaccines take so much time to develop that it’s unlikely to be of much value except over the long run, many months to future years like the seasonal flu. Finding treatments, however, might progress much faster. If I catch the disease two months from now rather than today, perhaps there will be something I can be treated with to prevent its developing into something serious.

The other reason to slow the spread of COVID-19 is to allow our medical services to catch up with the supplies, like ventilators, needed for serious cases. In addition, they will have to handle a smaller number of patients at a time rather than a large number at once that will overload their capacity in terms of beds, supplies, and personnel. That’s one (presumed) difference between this disease and the seasonal flu. People keep pointing to the number of deaths caused by the latter as if that makes it as bad or worse, but because those cases are spread out over a longer time and most medical providers have enough sense to have been vaccinated and therefore the danger to them is somewhat less, the flu doesn’t have the same effect as this threatens to.

quote:

James Woods on Twitter has posted some interesting cell phone videos and security videos that don't seem to be making it onto the news. I don't advocate a racist approach to Chinese folks, but there does seem to a few of them acting "suspiciously."

They are doing it on purpose. These people are agents... carrying out a mission.

We are at war. We just pretend not to notice.

April 2, 2020
China Is Preparing to Start a War with America
By William L. Gensert

Sometime in June 2001, while browsing the Wall Street Journal, I stumbled upon an item on an inside page all the way at the bottom. It was no more than 75 words in a box. It covered a CIA security announcement concerning an increase in internet and cell phone traffic among suspected terrorists from suspect areas in the Arab world. I canceled a Fourth of July trip downtown because of it.

I assumed that if an attack was coming, it would be on America's premium self-celebratory holiday, the Fourth of July.

When nothing happened, I took off my tinfoil hat, ascribing my worries to my suspicion of Islam — suspicions I had carefully curated from prior events such as the first World Trade Center attack, the Cole, the embassy bombings, and the killing of Americans soldiers in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

It has become accepted knowledge that America's intelligence agencies missed 9/11 warning signs — but that's not entirely true. Signs were seen, but they impelled no action. We were so convinced that the fall of the Soviet Union as the end of history precluded any need for urgency. Yet, even if there had been, no one, at that point, knew how to react.

I don't think I need to remind everyone of what happened on 09/11/2001.

I share this vignette as a means of showing that there are always signs. We, for whatever reason, miss them, or we ignore them for political purposes, or we refuse to believe them because they contradict the core tenets of our belief system.

I believe that China's actions today may be telegraphing an intent we are choosing to ignore. They show all the signs of a nation preparing to attack America. China seeks a bespoke world run by China with "Chinese characteristics" — a dream that under Trump was drifting away.

China appears to be laying the groundwork for a "justified" attack on the United States, perhaps in the South China Sea or perhaps elsewhere. It will be a military attack, not an act of terrorism, and the excuse will be America's deliberate transmission of COVID-19 in Wuhan.

When the Chinese became accusatory, it's telling that they didn't blame the CIA, always the usual suspect. No, they blamed it on American soldiers.

American military deliberately infecting China is an act of war worthy of a military response.

In October, the 2019 World Military Games were held in Wuhan. Chinese media triumphantly trumpeted the Americans winning just eight medals, while China won 239. It was then that we supposedly infected Wuhan citizens with the "American virus."

China is now defenestrating foreign media, sending home reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post at just the opportune moment. No nation wants journalists around when it is planning a sneak attack.

And with its economy ravaged by Trump's trade war and the virus shutdown, and now back at full production, while America's economy is in total shutdown and in the grip of an active pandemic, there will never be a better time to attack.

Here in America, the Democrats along with corporate media eagerly buy China's lies surrounding the nascence of the worldwide pandemic, the propaganda blaming America, the stories of Chinese benevolence, and the efficiency of Chinese methods in getting control of the virus at home. They are actively supporting China's version of the truth. China has every reason to believe they will continue to do so.

When or if China attacks, the left (the Dems, Antifa, and BLM) will flood the streets with anti-war protesters designed to stop America from responding to China's attacks. After all, don't we deserve it? We elected Trump, didn't we?

China claims there are no new infections when there is ample evidence that that claim is a lie. But the Chinese know that by the time people understand, it will be too late. They will have struck, and any new cases will be used to bolster their casus belli. Those Chinese who perish in the interim of silence will have died for the fatherland.

Conservative media have been neither as naïve nor as malicious as their mainstream brethren, often writing that China's behavior, with the denials and accusations, is merely a clumsy and foolish attempt to convince the world.

I don't see it this way. I think China is doing this to convince its own citizens more than anyone else. The Chinese communists can survive the world's condemnations, especially if they defeat America, but they live and die by controlling their own population. When they attack an American naval ship in the South China Sea, they won't need to worry about the support of their own nation because they will have convinced the people that America started the war and a peaceful and beneficent China was reluctantly, and only as a last resort, defending itself.

China is facing a demographic time bomb and has ten years to rewrite the facts on the ground. It is facing a quandary of epic proportions. It won't be long before it has the oldest population on the planet. Those people will be old before they are rich.

China's business model is existentially flawed. It has extraordinary debt that is multiples of its GDP, having grown exponentially through government funding of empty cities, military buildup, high-speed rail to nowhere, a Belt and Road initiative that's becoming obvious to partner countries as a means of colonialist extortion, and various other nonproductive government lending to CCP members. Its vaunted reserves will soon disappear.

China is also a nation, thanks to the "one child" initiative, that has hundreds of millions of young men with no prospect of marriage. Hundreds of millions of "incel" men make for either an angry and expendable fighting force or a bane upon society.

China is on the clock. Today, it is formidable, with a sophisticated and capable military. The Chinese may be able to win a confrontation, even a war, with the United States. Under Obama's policy of surrender, China had a chance of overtaking us economically while growing its military until its primacy was a fait accompli. But Trump killed that dream with his trade war, exposing the inherent weaknesses of the Chinese economy. And should the aftermath of the pandemic play out without interference, China's position in the world will be irreparably damaged.

What does China have to lose?

Time is not on China's side. Unless the Chinese destroy us on the field of battle soon, the clock will run out, and the dream of the coming "Chinese century" will be just that: a dream.

Everything they are doing points to them preparing to do so.

For China, there will never be a better time to start a war with America.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.co...a.html#ixzz6ISS36xrl

quote:

Originally posted by BOATTRASH1:
Good on Medtronic! This is the kind of effort we need. Hopefully,people remember the companies and countries that stepped up!!!

Yes. Good on Medtronic. They didn't exactly drop the ball, but they could have been more aware ... Medtronic bought the company which bought the company which had the 2008 contract to build ventilators for the stockpile.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0...ilator-shortage.html

(abridged ...)

In 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services established a new division, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The research agency convened a panel of experts in November 2007 to devise a set of requirements for a new generation of mobile, easy-to-use ventilators.

In 2008, the government requested proposals from companies that were interested in designing and building the ventilators.

The research agency opted not to go with a large, established device maker. Instead it chose Newport Medical Instruments, a small outfit in Costa Mesa, Calif.

In April 2012, a senior Health and Human Services official testified before Congress that the program was “on schedule to file for market approval in September 2013.” After that, the machines would go into production.

Then everything changed. In May 2012, Covidien, a large medical device manufacturer, agreed to buy Newport for just over $100 million.

Newport executives and government officials working on the ventilator contract said they immediately noticed a change when Covidien took over. Developing inexpensive portable ventilators no longer seemed like a top priority.

In 2014, with no ventilators having been delivered to the government, Covidien executives told officials at the biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.

In 2015, Covidien was sold for $50 billion to another huge medical device company, Medtronic.

Medtronic said, “The prototype ventilator, developed by Newport Medical, would not have been able to meet the specifications required by the government, nor at the price required.” Medtronic said that one problem was that the machine was not going to be usable with newborns.