Early Voting - the kids are alright

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Sunday November 01, 2020 · 7:55 AM PST

2020/11/01 · 07:55

semi rural upstate New York, last day early voting

at least in upstate New York. Just returned from early voting on a cold blustery morning, the line was a half hour long, despite a very efficient crew at the polling desk. A goodly portion of people waiting in line were young. Aside from the pleasure of voting for Biden-Harris on the Working Families Party line, seeing all those younger folk in line was very helpful in moderating my anxiety over outlying polls. Anecdotal and not necessarily predictive of PA, FL etc. but encouraging :-)

Monopoly Capitalism strikes again (Covid ventilator edition)

geruta

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Sunday March 29, 2020 · 5:05 AM PDT

2020/03/29 · 05:05

Today in The NY Times a story that shows good government intentions thwarted by multibillion dollar corporations

The U.S. Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed.

The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.

Article tells how starting in 2006 the CDC saw the need to prepare for the next pandemic with among other things, more ventilators — assessing a shortage of 70,000. At that time ventilators were large, expensive, and complicated requiring significant training to operate. They set a goal of developing a small, portable, easy. to use, much less expensive device and stockpiling them for the. next crisis.

They requested bids in 2008 and let a contract to a small California based company Newport Medical Instruments for 6.1 million for upfront development of a $3,000 machine. All progressed well, and in 2011 they delivered 3 working prototypes to the CDC. The head of the CDC at the time got a demonstration of the ventilators and:

“I got all excited,” he said. “It was a multiyear effort that had resulted in something that was going to be really useful.”

But soon after that Newport was bought by a large medical device company Covidien (who among other things made traditional large expensive ventilators), and the project slowed and eventually stalled:

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