Open Ventilator Registry

And then there are the problems of the ridiculously huge countries, like China, the US, or Brazil, that most of the rest of the world simply fail to fathom the enormity of distance-based logistical problems. Two of the largest cities in just the contiguous United States are 4 and a half hours apart at the speed of sound, and there's a bigass mountain range in the middle that you can't fly around. And it looks like a medical helicopter would take about 3 times as long, so moving sick people is a multiple of moving equipment. Even New York City to Chicago would handily kill a patient drowning in their own fluids before they arrived, and most first world countries are wider across than that.

During a crisis like this, the idea is to pool resources and create a nimble distribution network. Hospitals that don’t need their ventilators can share them, and if they need them they’ll know where to request them.

There's an a small global army of biomedical engineers, ICU doctors, programmers etc. working very hard to have rapidly manufactured ventilators designed, approved, and manufactured. I've seen some of the designs and they're elegant, simple, just work. Yeah, they need fine tuning but that's part of the process.

Humans are insanely awesome when they collaborate.

Hang in there humanity.

So you are saying a person trained on the use of a ventilator can only support a little over 2 patients on a ventilator? Are they sitting between the beds and pedaling the machine?

These are $30k machines. I would think, especially in a crisis situation, a single medical professional could probably handle a few dozen people on ventilators if they had too.