Fighting Coronavirus Isn't Just for the Domestics

by Steph Willems

Published: March 27th, 2020

fighting coronavirus isn t just for the domestics

For some reason, Ford and General Motors’ efforts to fill gaps in the medical supply chain have garnered considerable press. This has a way of happening when the President yells at you in public.

Tesla and Fiat Chrysler have stepped up to the plate to help out, too, filling a need in a country hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. A collective effort is good, but Toyota Motor North America wants others to know it’s a member of the same team. Make use of us, it’s telling others.

With North American production shut down just like the others, Toyota has pivoted to the production of medical equipment — specifically, personal protective equipment (PPE) like face shields and masks, while at the same time laying groundwork for ventilator production.

According to the automaker, 3D-printed face shields, seen below, will begin production next week at an unspecified manufacturing site (that’s almost certainly its San Antonio, Texas plant).

“The first distribution will be to MD Anderson in Houston, UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and other hospitals in Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan,” the company said in a statement.

Filtering masks will roll out of Toyota facilities just as soon as it finds a partner for that filter, the automaker added, noting that agreements with two companies are now in the finalization stage. Once sealed, the pact will lead to production of much-needed ventilators.

Toyota did not list the two potential partners, nor the exact nature of how it planned to boost output.

“With our plants idled and our dealers focused on servicing customers, we are eager to contribute our expertise and know-how in order to help quickly bring to market the medical supplies and equipment needed to combat the COVID crisis,” TMNA’s incoming CEO, Ted Ogawa, said in a statement. “Our message to the medical equipment community is we are here to help, please utilize our expertise.”

With a significant manufacturing footprint in North America and an incredibly loyal fanbase, seeing Toyota sitting this one out would be unusual. Americans have bought more than 2 million Toyotas per year for six years running, with the automaker’s market share not falling below 12 percent for the last eight.

[Images: Toyota]

#Coronavirus #Production #TMNA #Toyota

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Thelaine on Mar 28, 2020

It is becoming apparent that the end-of-the-world predictions, computer models warning of an apocalyptic black plague worldwide, are all wrong. Those paying attention were warned that the worse-case scenarios were hysterical, by the likes of Stanford epidemiologist John P.A. Ioannidis. In dramatic fashion, U.K. Imperial College scientist Neil Ferguson published a doomsday scenario on March 16. Now, just ten days later, he has reversed his outlook, essentially settling on a prediction no worse than a bad flu season. Most telling, the two U.S. public health icons, Drs Fauci and Birx, are both saying the extreme models that provoked extreme measures bear little resemblance to the actual data on the ground. From the New England Journal of Medicine March 26 co-authored by Fauci: This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/weve_been_had_and_trump_knows_it.html

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- JimZ on Mar 28, 2020
  
  https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/detroit-auto-show/2020/03/28/coronavirus-detroit-auto-show-canceled-tcf-center-hospital/2934331001/ once again, p!ss off.
  
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- Thelaine on Mar 28, 2020
  
  @JimZ The data from South Korea, where tracking the coronavirus has been by far the best to date, indicate that as much as 99 percent of active cases in the general population are “mild” and do not require specific medical treatment. The small percentage of cases that do require such services are highly concentrated among those age 60 and older, and further so the older people are. Other things being equal, those over age 70 appear at three times the mortality risk as those age 60 to 69, and those over age 80 at nearly twice the mortality risk of those age 70 to 79. These conclusions are corroborated by the data from Wuhan, China, which show a higher death rate, but an almost identical distribution. The higher death rate in China may be real, but is perhaps a result of less widespread testing. South Korea promptly, and uniquely, started testing the apparently healthy population at large, finding the mild and asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 other countries are overlooking. The experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which houses a contained, older population, proves the point. The death rate among that insular and uniformly exposed population is roughly 1 percent. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing.html
  
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- Arthur Dailey on Mar 28, 2020
  
  @thelaine Canadian data is that 6% of those confirmed as infected require hospital care, and that 3% require prolonged hospital care. Since hospitals in Canada and the USA regularly operate at just over 95% capacity, the increased load if infections continue unchecked will indeed overwhelm our healthcare systems. In Ontario since the 'shut down' has been implemented the number of people visiting emergency departments for other issues, the number of motor vehicle accidents and instances of violent crime have all decreased signficantly. This alone has helped to free up space at hospitals.
  
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- Arthur Dailey on Mar 28, 2020
  
  @Arthur Dailey Stats just revised on the 11:00pm news. 7% requiring hospitalization. 3% requiring critical care. Just over 40% of those being hospitalized are under the age of 45.
  
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- Ajla on Mar 28, 2020
  
  @Arthur Dailey That's interesting. Compared to NYC your overall hospitalization rate is much lower at 7% vs 20% but your under-45 hospitalization percentage is much higher 40%+ vs 21%. twitter.com/ArmstrongDrew/status/1243362419398729728
  
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- Ajla on Mar 28, 2020
  
  @thelaine "The experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which houses a contained, older population, proves the point." I don't know if the Diamond Princess is really the case to make the "overreacting" point. 712 infections out of 3711 passengers and crew is 19.2% infection rate. 10 deaths out of 712 is a 1.4% case fatality rate. Extrapolate those numbers out to the entire US population and you get about 870K dead. That isn't 2M, but it is still a lot of coffins.
  
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- Dan on Mar 28, 2020
  
  @thelaine "... indicate that as much as 99 percent of active cases in the general population are “mild” and do not require specific medical treatment." South Korea's excellent outbreak tracking indicates that 1.5% of all diagnoses are currently dead. 45% of cases are unresolved and some of those will die too. South Korea has tested the chit out of everyone that they can place anywhere near a known case, 99% of which are coming back negative, so if there's a large pool of asymptomatic cases to make the mortality rates less terrifying then they're hiding awfully well. Yeah it's technically more akin to flu than to SARS/MERS, 2% is linearly closer to 0.02 than it is to 10, but 2% of the world is an awful lot of suffocating.
  
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- Dan on Mar 29, 2020
  
  @Arthur Dailey "That’s interesting. Compared to NYC your overall hospitalization rate is much lower at 7% vs 20% but your under-45 hospitalization percentage is much higher 40%+ vs 21%." Selection bias, NYC as everywhere else that's overwhelmed is largely testing people sick enough to show up at the hospitals so milder cases aren't being measured. North Italy is showing a 15% death rate.
  
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- Dan on Mar 29, 2020
  
  @ajla "I don’t know if the Diamond Princess is really the case to make the “overreacting” point. 712 infections out of 3711 passengers and crew is 19.2% infection rate. 10 deaths out of 712 is a 1.4% case fatality rate." Keep in mind that the Diamond Princess cluster started with one passenger and spread to 712 in about five weeks. The spread didn't just stop on its own at that point, it was stopped by removing the 3,000 uninfected passengers and crew from the ship. We don't have a sterile world to stop the experiment and remove ourselves to when our infection rate hits 20%. Extrapolate that out to 60-80% for this to burn out for lack of new victims, and add what the hospital situation will look like with 30% of the country sick at once, and 2M coffins probably won't be enough.
  
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- Lou_BC on Mar 29, 2020
  
  @Dan - One person shedding SARS-CoV-2 infects three others. The fact that it isn't lethal to 80% of its hosts means it is very adept at replication. One can debate the actual death rate but as we have seen in Wuhan province and Italy, the high death rates are mostly attributable to a overwhelmed health care system. An overwhelmed system will also result in deaths of unaffected people who require hospitalization due to a lack of resources. In British Columbia, our COVID -19 death rate has been relatively low and our health care system is holding but "we" created capacity by cancelling all elective non-emergent cases.
  
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- Lou_BC on Mar 29, 2020
  
  @Arthur Dailey - Today's BC data shows the following COVID-19 data: 14% (1 in 7) require hospitalization x 12 days 19% (1 in 20) require critical care. 80% of this group will require mechanical ventilation. Earlier mechanical ventilation appears to improve outcomes. BC is able to handle an outbreak at the level that China experienced. On a side note: 1/3 of cases are under 40 years old.
  
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Threeer on Mar 29, 2020

I hope that when this passes that America comes upon the realization that we have become totally dependent on China and that we take back our independence and ability to provide for our own country. But the realist in me knows that once we are able, we will run right back out and begin massive consumption of cheap goods from a country that is neither friend or ally. We could be leading the effort to solve this, much like we have done in the past, but I fear our desire and ambition to take the reigns had long passed…

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