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Yep and they can do it again hers how they helped win the Second World War.
The auto industry retooled to manufacture tanks, trucks, jeeps, airplanes, bombs, torpedoes, steel helmets, and ammunition under massive contracts issued by the government. Beginning immediately after the production of automobiles ceased, entire factories were upended almost overnight. Huge manufacturing machines were jack hammered out of their foundations and new ones brought in to replace them. Conveyors were stripped away and rebuilt, electrical wires were bundled together and stored in the vast factory ceilings, half-finished parts were sent to steel mills to be re-melted, and even many of the dies that had been used in the fabrication of auto parts were sent to salvage. We’re it was reused in the making of tanks and planes and ships.
I know!
I'm from Detroit. My Grandfather owned a small Tool & Die shop. Suddenly, his phone was ringing off the hook and he had more orders than he could handle, all war work. My mother remembers driving a delivery van, to places such as Detroit City Airport, Central Train Station, Selfridge Air Force Base, and Willow Run Airport. Their little shop ran day and night! I've heard many stories of that time. Sadly, they're all deceased now. The beat goes on!
I would think a cpap machine could be used to help those with less severe respiratory issues, thus leaving the modern respirators for those in dire condition.
I know if I dial mine up it can really push the air to you.
There's a shortage of those too. I got my diagnosis a few weeks before this all kicked into high gear. They put in an order for a cpap but there are supply problems.
They started moving on this a while ago. I know there are some offices begin converted to medical facilities and they are making masks at a smaller facility. Mexico has the big manufacturing capability now. Our company has an office in Mexico and we have been buying truckloads of gowns and masks and sanitize, alcohol etc and shipping it to Michigan and donating it to hospitals. It is not a ton, but if more companies would pitch in, it would make a difference. Small shops can be switched over quickly to make things like gowns, masks ant the like. Respirators are a bigger problem. Factories can be re-tooled in a few weeks, but designing and making the tooling takes a long time.
The biggest issue isn't building the ventilators-it's building the tooling to make the parts to make the ventilators. Dies for stamping the steel and aluminum parts, molds for injection molded plastic parts, tooling/**** for assembling things. The auto makers for the most part don't build those things in-house. Now, the hope is the suppliers haven't been shut down by their governors as "non-essential" businesses.
I've heard, they will be 3D printed. As desperate measure.
Also, apparently government is pulling out of this idea anyway. Them being made by car manufacturers.
they will be ready just in time for them to not be needed.
the health care industry isnt like the military. the military gets endless money and wastes the vast majority of it and nobody is looking over them. so they will always buy the weapons that are made. health care cant just buy these machines just to have them sit around useless. so the only way they will is if the government pays for them. if that is the case, those companies making them will have to make deals with politicians to kickback money in some form to politicians.
The announcement came hours after Trump lashed out at GM and its CEO, Mary Barra, in a series of tweets.
“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, ‘very quickly’. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar,” he wrote.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
As usual with “this” General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, “very quickly”. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke “P”.
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11:16 AM - Mar 27, 2020
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“General Motors MUST immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio, or some other plant, and START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!! FORD, GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!!” he tweeted.
GM sold the Lordstown plant to a company that wants to make electric commercial vehicles.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
General Motors MUST immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio, or some other plant, and START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!! FORD, GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!! @GeneralMotors @Ford
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11:23 AM - Mar 27, 2020
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Trump criticized Barra, saying: "Always a mess with Mary B."
The tweets were an apparent response to a New York Times report that a $1 billion deal between the White House and the company was called off. The contract would have allowed the production of 80,000 ventilators.
Trump's move appears aimed at price and volume negotiations with the government. But it’s Ventec, not GM, that is talking with the government, said Chris Brooks, Ventec’s chief strategy officer.
Ventec ventilators, which are portable and can handle intensive care patients, cost about $18,000 each, Brooks said. That’s much cheaper than the more sophisticated ventilators used by hospitals that can cost up to $50,000, he said.
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