Top posting, just to say, very interesting!
Best,
Spencer
On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 8:54 AM Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
TL;DR;We are in the middle of a global pandemic. Hospitals and healthcare providers round the world are running short on supplies. Maker communities and irregular engineering efforts are capable of meeting those needs. With the economy shut down there is an urgent requirement for an alternative infrastructure to match supply and demand. This community has multiple platforms that could quickly establish such a platform.The long versionCOVID-19 is turning into the long feared global pandemic. Even with the current measures in place we are looking at a global death toll unprecedented in modern times. COVID-19 is nothing like flu. Like heart attacks influenza deaths are merely the final cause that kills an already very sick patient. COVID-19 has already killed thousands of healthy people who would otherwise have lived for decades.With almost 200 governments in the world it is inevitable that at least some are going to get their response to COVID-19 completely wrong. But as the contagion spreads it is beginning to become apparent that no response was sufficient.Left unchecked, COVID-19 will kill millions. Officials who were issuing the usual platitudes urging calm and complacency less than a week ago are ordering schools to be shut. We are now at the first stage of emergency measures and we should expect a full mobilization to follow in many countries with hotels being commandeered and turned into makeshift quarantine and hospital facilities.In the current circumstances there are three priorities:
- Slow the spread of the virus
- Mitigate the effects
- Maintain morale
The need for the third priority was a lesson learned from WWII. Fear and depression can easily overwhelm a population that is unable to go about its normal routine.Telling people to self-isolate is one thing, persuading them to remain self-isolated is another. COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of modern supply chains. Westerners are not used to seeing empty shelves in the supermarket. And the same supply chains that are failing to keep the supermarkets stocked are failing to supply the hospitals and health care workers.The media has been focused on a small number of supply issues. Principally the lack of ventilators and face masks. This has naturally led to 'open source' efforts to meet these demands. But this presents a coordination problem. There are people with the knowledge needed to design the ventilators, there are people with the resources to build them and we anticipate that there will soon be health care workers with the desperate need for them. How do we bring them together without stalling the process with bureaucratic inertia?Every nation has its foundation myths and one of the foundation myths of Britain is how we MacGyvered our way through WWII. My grandfather was a scavenger on an airbase in Lincolnshire. It was US logistics that won the war of course. But MacGyvering is how we survived.I was reminded of this when a friend remarked that he had actually worked with the inventor of the positive air pressure ventilator and the early devices were actually very primitive and built with commonplace materials. So I reached out to my local makerspace to ask which of the various open source ventilator efforts had critical mass and could make use of his skills.That was 12 hours ago. At this point we have a half dozen people working on the ventilator problem and another dozen looking into making masks. And these are people with serious engineering and fabrication skills with CNC, metalworking, electronics etc. shops available.This immediately set me thinking. If that is what one makerspace is capable of in a few hours, what can we do with all the makerspaces? And how can we make use of all the people sitting at home trying to think of things to do?There are tens of millions of homes with sewing machines. How many masks could just a small fraction of those turn out if we know what to make them from? Do coffee filters work? Are there better options?Put enough minds to work and any problem is solvable. Ventlators require trained personnel to operate them of course. But how much training is essential? How can we use untrained volunteers to extend the reach of those with scarce skills?And this made me realize that the real point of building an open source ventilator is not necessarily the thing in itself but as a symbol of what is achievable.In the short run, governments are not going to be able to acknowledge let alone meet every need. They will gradually catch up however and at some time we are going to see manufacturing facilities commandeered as well. But the government workers are going to face the exact same problem.So here is the challenge: We need an electronic scoreboard that can help match resources to needs. And this is going to require substantial resources, probably a team of a dozen or more people to run. Which means that we need a Google or a Microsoft or the like to step up. This is far beyond what a single person is going to be able to support it is going to grow too fast.
