TED CRUZ is calling on Azar to use the Defense Production Act to immediately ramp up ventilator production. “Time is of the essence.” https://t.co/xbqg8cA4X9 pic.twitter.com/NRyz0Wj49r— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 20, 2020
Secretary Alex Azar U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 200 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20201
Dear Secretary Azar:
On Wednesday, March 18, 2020, President Trump signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA) and delegating authority to you, as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to order the production and distribution of healthcare supplies needed to protect Americans against COVID-19. I urge you to exercise these delegated powers to the fullest extent necessary to ensure that healthcare facilities across the country have the ventilators they need to treat all patients who become critically ill with this virus.
This pandemic threatens to overrun this nation's healthcare resources. Approximately a week ago, the CDC considered a range of scenarios and estimated that between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected with COVID-19 over the course of this pandemic. This, in turn, according to the CDC, could result in between 2.4 million to 21 million people in the United States requiring hospitalization.
Because COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory disease that compromises an individual's ability to breath, some of the most critical patients with this virus may need access to a ventilator-a small machine that delivers air to the lungs through a tube placed in the windpipe-to survive. While it is uncertain how many people will need access to ventilators, the Wall Street Journal reported that "[a]s many as 810,000 U.S. coronavirus patients could need [them] by the end of May."
There are, however, only approximately 62,000 full-featured mechanical ventilators in the United States, and another 98,000 ventilators that could "provide basic function in an emergency during crisis standards of care." Without more ventilators (and workers to operate them), hospitals will soon be unable to provide these life-saving machines to a number of their critically ill patients, and doctors will have to make life-or-death decisions about who needs the machines most. As doctors in Italy recently explained, they are now "taking almost no patients older than 70" because "[t]here aren't enough ventilators to intubate all patients with Covid-19 who have severe breathing trouble."
Ensuring that our nation's health care facilities have sufficient ventilators must be a top priority. I applaud your efforts to "coordinate closely with private suppliers [and] health care purchasers . . . to ensure that resources are going where they're needed," but in this moment you should not hesitate to use the significant powers of the Defense Production Act delegated to you by the President to do what is necessary to ensure that Americans who contract this virus are not denied life-saving care because hospitals lack the appropriate machinery. Time is of the essence.
Sincerely,
TED CRUZ is calling on Azar to use the Defense Production Act to immediately ramp up ventilator production. “Time is of the essence.” https://t.co/xbqg8cA4X9 pic.twitter.com/NRyz0Wj49r— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 20, 2020
Really there should be enough or a large number already stockpiled.
There are plans in place for distribution.
This is what should be talked about not nonsense about if Trump said something wrong or other irrelevant blather.
I’m a little tired of people who are concerned about the number of health devices, equipment, and PPE available. The fearmongers who are upset that we weren’t prepared. Of course we weren’t. We do not have enough of many things for many dangerous scenarios. We could have had enough ventilators but it would have been at the expense of something else that we would squawk about there not being enough.
By the time you need a vent you’re 90% in a box.
Add yourself into the 100,000 per year lottery of healthcare acquired infections that result in death and that percent goes a little lower.
Prevention and aggressive use of stuff that works NOW(sorry about that additional year of profits for pharma/FDA) is the only way out.
Did the President not tell them or has he asked for Senators to contact them also. And why do we need to know that he asked them.
This is when the rational discussions should be had about how much resources and who gets them.
OKAY - THOSE DISCUSSIONS SHOULD HAVE STARTED about 30 years ago.
We cannot save everyone. Nuff said.
What he is saying is impossible. First of all, the number of ventilators needed is vastly over estimated. If the illness displayed a consistent need for for the device, that may be a point. But the illness, for ventilator purposes, is for the people with current lung diseases.
According to Lung.com. there are around 35 million Americans living with a chronic lung disease like asthma and COPD, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. And that is a high approximation.
Further more, if people with the illnesses, like myself, stay indoors until this thing is under control, that guestimate of an 810,000 need is totally overblown.
I have both COPD and Asthma, and I have only been on a ventilator one time in my life, during surgery. So how important is the device if healthy people don’t require it because of our health competency here in the country? Comparing it to Italy, is not quite being consistent.
rwood
1. Publish an open source design. Control of a medical ventilator can be done by a $5 Arduino.
2. Fire up US-based PC board houses to build board and supply them at cost or have the feds pay for them.
3. The electronic and mechanical components needed are sitting in warehouses and in distributor inventory that can’t be shipped because their regular customers are shutting down. Put those people to work kitting up all the parts.
4. Let makers and hobbyists all over the country build them, download and program them, and supply them to local hospitals.
5. A cottage industry like this can literally pop-up overnight. All that’s needed is the design files and some coordination. And those exists.
I am serious, this can be done and you don’t need to try to turn a car factory into an electronic assembly line to do it. A ventilator will perform just as well without the fancy enclosure and seal of approval in a crisis.
Ah yes, more words from politicians.
Saint Ted of Canada crawls out from under his bed.