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[Max™]

It only takes one, though. Case in point:

An angry mob of one is really more of an enraged loon.

Yes, and I've met a few in my time. Junkies, mostly, but also a few people who just wanted someone to help their loved ones, found my name somewhere connected with the science behind treating their illness, and acted in a way they understandably thought could help. They weren't stupid or insane, just under too much stress to understand the intricacies of modern drug development. The Dunning-Kruger effect and desperation are a dangerous combination.

Plus which, things are especially complicated right now, and that complexity can easily breed misunderstanding. For example, it's conceivable that Max, per his post, could want a mob to torture to death anyone who's received COVID-19 grant money or venture capital and subsequently succeeded in developing something, on the logic that they've somehow profited off the pandemic. Sure, that's nonsensical, but anger has a way of making violent nonsense feel comforting, and a lot of people will be very angry in the near future -- and one motivated loon with a big rock can still do a lot of damage in the wrong place.

No, I want people who deserve a dose of mob justice to get it, I specifically mentioned an example: Shkreli took an opportunity to buy the patent rights for a drug, one that costs pennies to make and sold for $13.50 and jacked the price up to $750 because fuck yeah, capitalism!

Shkreli didn't make that drug, he didn't do anything to help distribute it, he didn't do anything to even help the people who developed it, he just noticed big fat profits sitting around unreaped and jumped on it.

I would love for a Salk type to develop a vaccine and push for that shit to remain affordable and accessible, I will not be surprised if a smirking bitchboy douchebag like Shkreli tries to step in and make a few bucks off of it, I mean for fuck's sake, Jared Douchner is already trying to set himself up in a profitable gatekeeper position regarding aid and whatnot without seeming to care that said gate is currently sitting on ~19k known corpses, many of which might have lived if not for his dumbfuck-in-law being so much less than we need.

[feelotraveller]

Yeah, I think trekkin was talking about something different - viz: that drug runners shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of the gangs they belong to.

[Trekkin]

Yeah, I think trekkin was talking about something different - viz: that drug runners shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of the gangs they belong to.

How on Earth did you get any reference to drug runners or gangs from my post? Or is this some particularly sad attempt at metaphor?

[Rolan7]

I have to roll my eyes a bit whenever people pick out Shkreli.  Yes he perpetuated the horror that is capitalism, but the reason he got famous is for his lack of charisma.  He has a punchable smirking face, so people made him a figurehead for bad pharmaceutical execs - except he became a scapegoat instead.

Saying that a drug is cheap to manufacture is meaningless if it cost a lot to develop.  That's real work with real value, whatever economic system you prefer.
Like:

They'd stil get compensated for their expenses, it'll just be a non-profit product for once, with an added bonus of their company being added to the Hall of Heroes.

That's easy enough to demand, but the "reward" is downright condescending.  That's not a reward, it's a veiled threat, with all the consequences that entails next time around. 

Under the capitalist systems we have there needs to be a bounty for saving the world.  That's how things work at the moment.  That's far from the worst thing about our system, in fact it's arguably its optimal use case.  The true horror is the *normal* price fixing which we've come to accept, at least here in America.  We could even see another white knight donation of vaccine for the public good, and the true harm would be how much goodwill that would buy the vampires bleeding us dry day by day.

Spoiler: I encountered a real life anime on tv today (click to show/hide)

what is meant by real life anime? I see a person looking forward, I don’t see how that translates to being an anime

Their face looks uncanny, somewhat artificial, at least in that still image.  They seem to be sucking their cheeks in a bit, which makes the jaw seem to project cartoonishly by comparison.  Or it might just be a bony face.

I don't really know, I'm bad at judging faces.

[ChairmanPoo]

I have to roll my eyes a bit whenever people pick out Shkreli.  Yes he perpetuated the horror that is capitalism, but the reason he got famous is for his lack of charisma.  He has a punchable smirking face, so people made him a figurehead for bad pharmaceutical execs - except he became a scapegoat instead.

Saying that a drug is cheap to manufacture is meaningless if it cost a lot to develop.  That's real work with real value, whatever economic system you prefer.

You picked a very bad example to explain that idea (with which I agree in principle). Shkreli developed nothing, contributed nothing. He's a patent troll.

[Rolan7]

Yeaaah I should have put a horizontal line there, I didn't mean for those thoughts to flow together.  Shkreli *is* useless.

[Zangi]

It only takes one, though. Case in point:

An angry mob of one is really more of an enraged loon.

Yes, and I've met a few in my time. Junkies, mostly, but also a few people who just wanted someone to help their loved ones, found my name somewhere connected with the science behind treating their illness, and acted in a way they understandably thought could help. They weren't stupid or insane, just under too much stress to understand the intricacies of modern drug development. The Dunning-Kruger effect and desperation are a dangerous combination.

Plus which, things are especially complicated right now, and that complexity can easily breed misunderstanding. For example, it's conceivable that Max, per his post, could want a mob to torture to death anyone who's received COVID-19 grant money or venture capital and subsequently succeeded in developing something, on the logic that they've somehow profited off the pandemic. Sure, that's nonsensical, but anger has a way of making violent nonsense feel comforting, and a lot of people will be very angry in the near future -- and one motivated loon with a big rock can still do a lot of damage in the wrong place.

No, I want people who deserve a dose of mob justice to get it, I specifically mentioned an example: Shkreli took an opportunity to buy the patent rights for a drug, one that costs pennies to make and sold for $13.50 and jacked the price up to $750 because fuck yeah, capitalism!

Shkreli didn't make that drug, he didn't do anything to help distribute it, he didn't do anything to even help the people who developed it, he just noticed big fat profits sitting around unreaped and jumped on it.

I would love for a Salk type to develop a vaccine and push for that shit to remain affordable and accessible, I will not be surprised if a smirking bitchboy douchebag like Shkreli tries to step in and make a few bucks off of it, I mean for fuck's sake, Jared Douchner is already trying to set himself up in a profitable gatekeeper position regarding aid and whatnot without seeming to care that said gate is currently sitting on ~19k known corpses, many of which might have lived if not for his dumbfuck-in-law being so much less than we need.

The sad thing is we will have dumbfucks sucking up that gaslight praising Trump and Kushner for saving best murrica.

[wierd]

So.. Looking inside the OxyGen open hardware model based definitions for their emergency ventillator product. They are fortunate I was not their instructor in their CAD class.

Naughty naughty naughty.

Lazy engineers did not supply technical drawings, only model based data. (actually they did, just not GOOD ones.)  Model based data does not contain bend radii. Technical data does not contain material requirements for sheet metal (at least not PROPER ones anyway).

naughty naughty naughty.


ARGH...   Seriously... These kids...


Material:  Aluminum or stainless steel.


WHICH ONES!?  there are like, 20+ kinds of each-- what material condition? Any treatments? No?  What, are you making this out of recycled tin cans or what!?  Is this 2025, or 3035? Is it 5150 stainless steel? Is it T0, T1, T2, T3.... Seriously!?

Did you guys even consider dissimilar materials induced corrosion when using the chassis as a common ground?  Did you research what material your power supply's outer casing is made from, and spec an electronically compatible material for your cabinet? No?  Clearly-- you did not!

Production ready my hairy white ass. 


I am thinking I will do some of their work for them, and create appropriate 1:1 fully dimensional drawings with all the missing data, after doing a whole fucking lot of guesswork based on standard material data sheets.

[Reelya]

Actually, for Daraprim, Skhrel's drug, it doesn't have a patent. The market for it was just extremely small, so it wasn't viable for there to be two suppliers in the market.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/drug-made-famous-by-shkrelis-5000-price-hike-is-still-750-a-pill/

Back in 2015, Shkreli’s former pharmaceutical company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the rights to and dramatically raised the price of Daraprim. It’s an off-patent, decades old drug that treats relatively rare parasitic infections, namely toxoplasmosis, which largely strikes babies and patients with HIV/AIDS. It costs pennies to make and generates little profit. Only a few thousand patients need it each year. And there was no competition at the time Turing bought the rights.

It's still $750 a pill btw, but very recently a generic form was cleared by the FDA
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/daraprim-generic-version/index.html

[wierd]

This is precisely a good case for nationalized healthcare.

It is both 1) essential for affected populations, and 2) not sufficiently high demand for inexpensive manufacture.  That is exactly the kind of combination that a capitalist free market solution is extremely bad at providing, and is the kind of edge case where nationalized healthcare would assure quality of life for the affected populations.

"But MUH FREE MARKETZ!"

They can all go smoke dicks.

Hopefully HIV infected ones, so they can experience the bullshit they are engineering first hand.

[ChairmanPoo]

So.. Looking inside the OxyGen open hardware model based definitions for their emergency ventillator product. They are fortunate I was not their instructor in their CAD class.

Naughty naughty naughty.

Lazy engineers did not supply technical drawings, only model based data. (actually they did, just not GOOD ones.)  Model based data does not contain bend radii. Technical data does not contain material requirements for sheet metal (at least not PROPER ones anyway).

naughty naughty naughty.


ARGH...   Seriously... These kids...


Material:  Aluminum or stainless steel.


WHICH ONES!?  there are like, 20+ kinds of each-- what material condition? Any treatments? No?  What, are you making this out of recycled tin cans or what!?  Is this 2025, or 3035? Is it 5150 stainless steel? Is it T0, T1, T2, T3.... Seriously!?

Did you guys even consider dissimilar materials induced corrosion when using the chassis as a common ground?  Did you research what material your power supply's outer casing is made from, and spec an electronically compatible material for your cabinet? No?  Clearly-- you did not!

Production ready my hairy white ass. 


I am thinking I will do some of their work for them, and create appropriate 1:1 fully dimensional drawings with all the missing data, after doing a whole fucking lot of guesswork based on standard material data sheets.

*shrug* allegedly it's in mass production at the moment.

Although TBH I've had this nagging feeling  about this project all along. It was an university-hack for "emergency situations", not a "serious" ventilator project. It jumped from being a 3D hack to making 300 a day in a repurposed car factory...

Now, I think they *probably* are making those. But I have some doubts as to whether they are seeing a lot of use.  Remember, Spain has 2400 extra ventilators from private healthcare, plus probably more stuff that can be repurposed as one from the same source. That stockpile hasn't been touched at all.
So... I suspect the OxyGen ventilator project was backed mostly as a PR stunt, because if we were in such a dire need of ventilators, we'd let the ones in the private sector sitting by. They'd get seized, or rented, or whatever.

This is not to say that they aren't being stockpiled just in case (after all, if you want them when you need them, they need to be made beforehand), or that someone is not playing around with those, maybe offering a chance to people who wouldn't make the ICU cut in the much-overloaded Barcelonese hospitals, in a trial setting... just that at present they might be mass-produced, but they certainly are not being (or intended to be) mass used, at least for the time being.

[wierd]

The issue is that they did not follow good design principles in their project, and it shows.

Material is selected for a wide variety or reasons. Engineering students are trained to pick appropriate materials, and to work with peers in other engineering disciplines.  In this case, they should have conversed with their EE classmates, and selected appropriate materials, then specc'ed them appropriately.

The notion of "These are short term use only, so it doesn't matter" is similar to the kind of malpratice that happens with hospice patients. "They are gonna die anyway, so giving them proper treatment is not important."  You dont know if they will recover enough on their own to go off hospice, and so such a decision is callous and simply wrong on every professional level.  Likewise, the 'Its disposable!' mindset, as justification for laxity in design, is just gross negligence.

This could have been a great opportunity to actually do good design and best practices. But no. They did not.

[martinuzz]

In China, there is a small increase in infections again, after lockdown measures were slowly being lifted.
Yesterday 46 new cases were reported, of whom 42 came in from foreign countries.
In response, the city government of Guanghzou (port city with 14.5 million inhabitants) has ordered draconic measures against 'foreigners': people who look like africans (read: black people) are no longer allowed into bars and restaurants, and anyone who has been in contact with a black person will face mandatory testing and quarantine.
The US consulate advises afro-americans, and people who have could classify as 'having been in contact with africans' to avoid the city.

EDIT:Meanwhile in the Netherlands, press got word of a humanitarian flight to China that the Dutch government helped organize back in february.
Many millions of face masks, protective clothing and gloves for hospital workers, even respirator machines, and various other medical supplies were bought up from the Netherlands, Germany, and Turkey and sent to Wuhan via Schiphol, after the Chinese government had asked for help.
Our government kept the deal discrete and secret to not embarrass China.  The Chinese government didn't want it to be known that they had to ask for help.
The trader hired by the government to procure the goods even asked the government if the products weren't needed when the virus would also affect the Netherlands, but back in february, our western nations still thought they were invulnerable.

[coalboat]

people who look like africans (read: black people) are no longer allowed into bars and restaurants, and anyone who has been in contact with a black person will face mandatory testing and quarantine.

In February media revealed a policy that grants citizenship to non-Chinese (which already exists for years) and implied that this policy was for giving citizenship to illegal African immigrant in Guangzhou. After that racist speech was deliberately tolerated on Internet. An obvious red herring to draw attention from criticizing government failure. I reported a racist post (on a Chinese site) and it wasn't deleted for days. While any post remotely related to the discussion of government's role in controlling epidemic is closely monitored by either bots or hired censorship workers.

[ChairmanPoo]

In China, there is a small increase in infections again, after lockdown measures were slowly being lifted.
Yesterday 46 new cases were reported, of whom 42 came in from foreign countries.
In response, the city government of Guanghzou (port city with 14.5 million inhabitants) has ordered draconic measures against 'foreigners': people who look like africans (read: black people) are no longer allowed into bars and restaurants, and anyone who has been in contact with a black person will face mandatory testing and quarantine.
The US consulate advises afro-americans, and people who have could classify as 'having been in contact with africans' to avoid the city.

EDIT:Meanwhile in the Netherlands, press got word of a humanitarian flight to China that the Dutch government helped organize back in february.
Many millions of face masks, protective clothing and gloves for hospital workers, even respirator machines, and various other medical supplies were bought up from the Netherlands, Germany, and Turkey and sent to Wuhan via Schiphol, after the Chinese government had asked for help.
Our government kept the deal discrete and secret to not embarrass China.  The Chinese government didn't want it to be known that they had to ask for help.
The trader hired by the government to procure the goods even asked the government if the products weren't needed when the virus would also affect the Netherlands, but back in february, our western nations still thought they were invulnerable.

That's not quite true. I'm certain the Chinese goverment openly admitted  weeks ago they had gotten European help. In fact it was specifically mentioned as the reason for helping Italy. I can't find the exact quote but I'd swear it was Xi Jinping himself.

Edit: some links
https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-china-steps-in-to-help-italy-battle-the-virus/a-52901560


http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/20/c_138898996.htm

according to China's Ambassador to France Lu Shaye.

"At the crucial moment when China waged war against the epidemic, France provided us with precious support and assistance," said Lu. "Now as France and the whole of Europe are facing the serious challenge of the pandemic, China is ready to provide aid as far as possible"