Bill de: You are right.

btw, despite what we have been “told” Ford and GM are not making Ventilators. Simply untrue. I don’t know how I can believe anything we are being told. Now it is fairly apparent that Dr. Fauci is being silenced, too. Believe what you will...

That is not meant for you, Bill. I think you seem to have a pretty good handle on how things work.

Oh, and the ship headed to the West Coast in the next couple of days. Well, according to Trump today, that ship is still undergoing “heavy repairs,”. But, we will be back to normal in the next few days, so we probably won’t need it. We just need to worry about the Stock Market. That is way more important than the few people that are gonna die because of the latest about-face on how we are going forward in dealing with the disease. A lot of them are just old people, anyway.

I've been keeping up with the news about developing a Covid 19 vaccine. The latest news is far from encouraging. There may be a number of different strains of the virus with varying levels of lethality. Simply collecting blood samples from Covid 19 survivors and developing a vaccine from there may not work. Years ago I volunteered as test subject in a malaria vaccine study. The study was done at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The vaccine proved to be only effective against certain strains of malaria. As for Chloroquine to date there is no clinical studies showing its effectiveness against Covid 19. It should also be noted that overdosing on Chloroquine can be fatal.

What is so insidious about the Novel Coronavirus is that it contains RNA never before found in humans. It is a very sticky virus, which means it adheres to anything an infected person touches. When someone shakes hands, the virus transfers. Then when you touch your face, pick your nose, rub your eyes... Since we have no innate immunity to it, it is very infectious.

Herd immunity IS the long term solution. Many medical research teams are trying to reach a better short term solution than hospitalization and ventilation and isolation (They are working on a cure, a treatment, a relief... anything better than doing nothing).

To establish herd immunity, we can let people die, or we can invent a vaccine, or some combination of both, depending on the uncertain time frame. To save as many lives as possible, the medical community have told us to practice social distancing and quarantines. The point is to limit the rate of infection to something more likely for the medical community to handle.

Unfortunately, the business community and the less well-educated among us think that the current strategy is worse than the alternative of just letting people get sick and recover — or die. There is massive pressure on Trump to tell Fauci to stick it where the sun doesn't shine. In an election year, Trump will decide to... Who knows???

Last night, it sounded like Trump is ready to abandon the current strategy in April and tell us all to get back to work. If he does, it won't take long for the number of cases to skyrocket far beyond what the medical infrastructure can handle. The medical community experts really DO know what they are talking about. They are scientists who create projections derived from cold, hard evidence.

This is one we DO NOT want to "leave in God's hands." As a famous physicist once wrote, "God does not micromanage the universe." No, God leaves it in OUR hands to deal with this as best we can. Thankfully, we are an ingenious, creative lot.

Do your parts to stay safe, folks!

I would add for IDGuy that Fauci is the credible voice to the majority of this Country’s population. It is vital he be there to give some credibility to these PR sessions. I don’t know what he could be doing that is more important. Of course, I am pretty sure you have personal knowledge of exactly what he was doing.
Btw, have you heard about the man who died using a version of the Malaria drug pushed by our leadership as a promising cure. The wife is in serious condition as we speak. Chloroquine has the ability to kill. Worse, this was not even the correct form. This man, who had no symptoms of C-19, took this, along with his wife, as a preventive measure. The form this Arizona man took was intended to treat parasites in fish. I pray the wife will survive.
This is the danger of mis and dis information instead of having responsible medical experts doing the updates and information dissemination. We need leadership in Washington not self-serving politicians hyping feel-good, but false information.

This is, first of all, brand new. Not the case even yesterday. Loaning some Engineers is likely not going to provide any ventilators any time soon. All that said, I am happy that private companies are beginning to look at what they can do to be of help in this time of crisis. How realistic this help will be in the short-term is pretty obvious. If gov’t was made fully aware of this back in January, through Intelligence briefings and the like then this was KNOWN not to be a hoax. Why was no action taken back then? Why was the military not asked to start new hospitals? Why were PPE’s not being contracted for a nationwide effort to slow the disease? Why were Ford and others not asked or Ordered back then to “get hopping?” Our efforts were late and insufficient. Certainly there are vast differences in opinions and beliefs as to why this was the case. My beliefs will convince no one who does not want to believe them, so I won’t try. Still, answer some of the many questions we face. Be honest w/your answers. Feel a gnawing in the pit of your stomach?
Now we are in essence being asked to allow people to die so that we can raise the Dow-Jones and NASDAQ. Remember, just a few years ago the ObamaCare plan was being attacked as having Death Panels to decide who would be allowed to live or die? What hypocrisy.
I hope not too many unnecessary deaths are going to be acceptable . Anyone have a number or estimate of a number they will find is ok? Will that number change if it turns out that someone you care about is likely to be in the sacrificed group? I am certainly hearing government officials making statements that seem to propose this. Many remarks on this site have made such proposals, as well. Reopening this country, as it has been called, will certainly cause more deaths.
I hope my comments answer some of the questions that have been posed because Ford has now stated it is open to some assistance toward designing the ventilators currently so urgently needed.