re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

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Right now, there are 105,000 ventilators, and even during a regular flu season, about 100,000 are in use. In a worst-case human pandemic, according to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November, the country would need as many as 742,500.

A typical hospital ventilator costs $30,000, and hospitals, operating on thin profit margins, say they cannot afford to buy and store hundreds of units that may never be used. Cheaper alternatives can be deployed in a crisis, but doctors say they are grossly inadequate to deal with a flu pandemic.

Congress authorized only $3.8 billion of the $7.1 billion that Mr. Bush requested for flu preparedness, and nearly 90 percent of it is earmarked for vaccines and the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Buying enough ventilators for a flu outbreak like that of 1918 would cost $18 billion.

The federal preparedness plan leaves preparations for medical care up to state and city health officials, but the only government agency that amasses ventilators is the Strategic National Stockpile, created in 1999 by the disease centers to store medicine and equipment for use in a terrorist attack or a disaster. But the agency has only 4,000 to 5,000 ventilators, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a dispute between government health and security agencies about whether the size of the stockpile ought to be kept secret.

There is also a shortage of trained personnel, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
"Ask any respiratory therapist -- you have to adjust the gases, the pressures," he said. "We don't have enough trained people to maintain them."

In a recent emergency drill, said Dr. John L. Hick, a professor of emergency medicine at the Mayo Medical School in Minnesota, the 27 hospitals in his area could come up with only 16 extra ventilators when faced with a hypothetical outbreak of 400 cases of pneumonic plague.

In a national emergency, he said, "it will come down to some really thin cuts on a scoring system."

"Families are going to be told, 'We have to take your loved one off the ventilator even though, if we could keep him on it for a week, he might be fine,' " he went on. "How do you think that's going to go over? It's going to be a nightmare."

Dräger Medical, a German company that is the world's largest maker of hospital ventilators, can double its assembly line capacity in a week, said Mandy Hartman, a vice president for marketing. In a year, that would add "more than 10,000" ventilators to the world supply, said Ms. Hartman, who declined to be more specific.

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BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk)
BREAKING: Italy reports 449 new cases of coronavirus and 5 new deaths, raising total to 1,577 cases and 34 dead LINK

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What is so shocking about that email?

That's straight from CDC website. We were all sent the updated CDC guidelines Friday.

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@BNODesk
11m
Spain reports 8 new cases of coronavirus, or 26 new cases so far today, raising total to 84; at least 5 people are in critical condition

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GEAUXmedic

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My wife's vet clinic is running out of masks already and can't get more because of dumbasses. It's yalls pets that are going to get coughed on during surgery. Idiots.

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