A request from the Front line - PPE Equipment supplies and help Required-

Can we help make this the most important thing for a month
"Keep those that can keep as alive - Safe and able to do their best for us."

copied from face book so not got the origin or proper references but the information on the logistics of the basic is true.

link
The CDC is recommending hospital staff use bandanas when masks run out.
Hospitals are asking the public to sew masks. Here is a physician responding:

Please don't tell me that in the richest country in the world in the 21st century, I'm supposed to work in a fictionalized Soviet-era disaster zone and fashion my own face mask out of cloth because other Americans hoard supplies for personal use and so-called leaders sit around in meetings hearing themselves talk. I ran to a bedside the other day to intubate a crashing, likely COVID, patient. Two respiratory therapists and two nurses were already at the bedside. That's 5 N95s masks, 5 gowns, 5 face shields and 10 gloves for one patient at one time. I saw probably 15-20 patients that shift, if we are going to start rationing supplies, what percentage should I wear precautions for?

Make no mistake, the CDC is loosening these guidelines because our country is not prepared. Loosening guidelines increases healthcare workers' risk but the decision is done to allow us to keep working, not to keep us safe. It is done for the public benefit - so I can continue to work no matter the personal cost to me or my family (and my healthcare family). Sending healthcare workers to the front line asking them to cover their face with a bandana is akin to sending a soldier to the front line in a t-shirt and flip flops.

I don't want talk. I don't want assurances. I want action. I want boxes of N95s piling up, donated from the people who hoarded them. I want non-clinical administrators in the hospital lining up in the ER asking if they can stock shelves to make sure that when I need to rush into a room, the drawer of PPE equipment I open isn't empty. I want them showing up in the ER asking "how can I help" instead of offering shallow "plans" conceived by someone who has spent far too long in an ivory tower and not long enough in the trenches. Maybe they should actually step foot in the trenches.

I want billion-dollar companies like 3M halting all production of any product that isn't PPE to focus on PPE manufacturing. I want a company like Amazon, with its logistics mastery (it can drop a package to your door less than 24 hours after ordering it), halting its 2-day delivery of 12 reams of toilet paper to whoever is willing to pay the most in order to help get the available PPE supply distributed fast and efficiently in a manner that gets the necessary materials to my brothers and sisters in arms who need them.

I want Proctor and Gamble, and the makers of other soaps and detergents, stepping up too. We need detergent to clean scrubs, hospital linens and gowns. We need disinfecting wipes to clean desk and computer surfaces. What about plastics manufacturers? Plastic gowns aren't some high-tech device, they are long shirts/smocks...made out of plastic. Get on it. Face shields are just clear plastic. Nitrile gloves? Yeah, they are pretty much just gloves...made from something that isn't apparently Latex. Let's go. Money talks in this country. Executive millionaires, why don't you spend a few bucks to buy back some of these masks from the hoarders, and drop them off at the nearest hospital.

I love biotechnology and research but we need to divert viral culture media for COVID testing and research. We need biotechnology manufacturing ready and able to ramp up if and when treatments or vaccines are developed. Our Botox supply isn't critical, but our antibiotic supply is. We need to be able to make more plastic ET tubes, not more silicon breast implants.

Let's see all that. Then we can all talk about how we played our part in this fight. Netflix and chill is not enough while my family, friends and colleagues are out there fighting. Our country won two world wars because the entire country mobilized. We out-produced and we out-manufactured while our soldiers out-fought the enemy. We need to do that again because make no mistake, we are at war, healthcare workers are your soldiers, and the war has just begun.

For us not on the front line
interesting read on masks making using different materials and how to re-use an N95 but putting in oven 70c for 30 minutes.
Mask Materials and re-use information from s Stanford Learnly Anesthesiologist

The CDC has a budget of 11,100,000,000$ and they don't have a stockpile of masks... Aren't they supposed to be prepared for a pandemic?

Have they looked into this?

There is a lot of equipment needed, to be sure. We have so many tools like 3d printers, CNCs, etc out there.

Meeting standards might be tricky, but specifying the parts with greater tolerance thresholds could alleviate the pressure from major manufacturers.

Just send us the files

a reply to: Serdgiam

It’s almost like government standards get in the way

The government getting in the way ups prices which means better factory jobs

Mentioned this elsewhere. Forget the President ... people need to pressure these companies that just got huge breaks to push this stuff out we are 10 days in...

3m cranking out masks


3m's been on it. He's correct about preparation should have been way better beforehand, and the idiot hoarders and scalpers suck, but it's not like the manufacturers are sitting around fiddling their dum dums.

So seen a report of China buying up surplus western PPE stock early in the year, which made it a Trump fault there is none.

I am seeing MSM in the UK Dyson and other creating new ventilators made prototype wait approval to go into production.
Amazing 10 day to turn sucking in to controlled blowing. link

See Trump just got America GM making ventilators and a Canadian Retired respiratory therapist John Strupat made a prototype pandemic ventilator a few years ago the works for $500 got awards for it and has made it open source to anyone to make.

a reply to: Serdgiam

I don't know why individuals are having to share this study and it isn't headline news.

I know a hospital nurse doing 12 hour shifts in salt treated masks she made at home. So far, so good. I check on her every day.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Im genuinely glad to hear it about your friend!

I heard about them from one of your posts, so its getting ..some.. traction.

But, yeah.. Lots about all this is strange, eh?

Congress knew of medical supply shortages in 2018, but didn't take action to fix the problem(s).

Source: www.washingtontimes.com...

a reply to: MotherMayEye

You have a PM

And carewemust, I really think that a lot of issues here (the world over) are perhaps the result of everything from optimism bias (thatll never happen! response) to outright negligence.