I’ve been doing it for years: Some tips.
Category Archives: Health
DIY Ventilators
Just out of curiosity, I did a search, and came across this page. It’s not obvious what its vintage is, but it’s likely easier to build one now, electronically. Seems like it wouldn’t take that long to set up some production lines. We could even make it an export.
[Update a while later]
There’s a Slack channel for the project.
“Green” Grocery Bags
It will be morbidly hilarious if “green” Californians die from coronavirus due to their voting stupidity.
Covid Speculations
…and notes on the American response:
In the approval of new medical tools (drugs, laboratory tests, and medical devices), our system — including direct federal and state regulators and our civil liability regime — massively prefers safety (avoiding sins of commission, if you will) to the introduction of new technology that might save lives. We don’t put a feather on the “safety” side of the scales, we weigh it down with an anvil, and are thereby far more willing to commit the sin of omission (doing nothing) than commit the sin of approving a technology that is dangerous or ineffective.
Voters, politicians, government officials, and the press overwhelmingly favor the “safety paramount” approach of the United States. Unfortunately, the highly deliberative manner of the American approach becomes dangerous in a rapidly spreading pandemic. Much as the media and citizens wish it were otherwise, we cannot change our system, or even our bureaucratic impulses, suddenly. Even if lives depend on it.
There is no way to know how many millions of lives both the caution of the FDA in approving drugs (requiring “effectiveness,” and not just safety), and the federal junk-science approach to nutrition have cost us over the decades.
[Update a while later]
Related, and (speaking as a boomer) darkly amusing:
Good job, team! The FDA is forcing the CDC to double test for the virus. Because, you know, testing was going so smoothly and rapidly, and we knew who had it.
[Saturday-morning update]
She shoots, she scores.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Bernie: “We must seize the means of toilet-paper production!”
[Update a few minutes later]
Globalization may be the biggest victim of the virus. It was definitely insane to put China on the critical path of our drug production.
The Coronavirus
The problem with it isn’t what you can see, but what you can’t.
[Update a while later]
Six movies about pandemics to watch (or avoid) if you’re stuck at home (from Lileks).
The 1918 Flu Epidemic
An interesting comparison and the value of social distancing.
The West Is One Crisis Away
A Coronavirus Tipping Point
It’s not a problem until it gets to the lungs.
That probably means that the highest risk is to people whose lungs are already compromised, from smoking, or asthma, or other things. That might also explain why there have been no reported instances of it killing kids.
[Update a few minutes later]
What are the chances of someone in your company getting it?
Drink Up
Regular consumption of hard liquor may provide protection against the coronavirus.
It would be ironic if drinking Corona itself did so.
The Epidemic In Waiting
How it erupted in China.