Comment by Kalium | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kalium | Hacker News Reader

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I believe the point is that the minimum amount of training required to be of greater help than hindrance (i.e., net benefit) in an ICU and running ventilators is sufficiently high that it's not a small thing to spin up a cohort.

To my exceptionally limited understanding - and I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong - operating a ventilator correctly is not a matter of standing in front of a machine and watching a few numbers for problematic readings. That can be done by machines and computers. What requires training is everything else around it, which requires an understanding of medical protocols, anatomy, the ability to respond usefully to emergencies without being in the way, and so on.

Which is to say that this is not something that highly specialized and narrow technicians can be usefully trained for in a very short time at this particular moment.

That's not to say your idea is bad! It's definitely good and worth exploring in the future. There will be time to explore how to have smarter tools that can be used with a less general skillset can be developed. There will also be time to explore how to develop specialized and narrow curricula for such things - itself not a trivial task.

> That's not to say your idea is bad! It's definitely good and worth exploring in the future. There will be time to explore how to have smarter tools that can be used with a less general skillset can be developed. There will also be time to explore how to develop specialized and narrow curricula for such things - itself not a trivial task.

This thread isn’t about automating medical professionals responsibilities one task at a time, or attempting to step on their egos. I’m as proud of their title, their coat, and their debt as they are.

If a pandemic respiratory virus is not the time to “consider exploring” this idea, when is? When people are left to die in their homes because the ambulances stop taking calls...?

We are, of course, just shooting out ideas of grandeur. A reactive strategy will be maintained, people will die, and everyone will throw their hands up in the sky and say “nothing else could have been done. March simply was not the time to think about COVID-specific medical operation efficiencies. There will, however, be a time to explore...”

I'm trying to suggest, as gently as possible, that a time when our medical system is verging on being flooded may not be the best of all possible moments imaginable to add a significant resource-consumer in the form of an experimental mass training program. I am attempting to encourage more systemic thinking and greater consideration of context. I understand that some may disagree with some or all of these arguments.

Please accept my deepest apologies if I have in any way seemed to imply that the current reactive strategy is an ideal long-term solution. I do not in any way think this.

Don't hesitate to ask if there's anything else I can clarify for you - I frequently fail to express myself as well as I'd like.

> It's definitely good and worth exploring in the future. There will be time to explore how to have smarter tools that can be used with a less general skillset can be developed. There will also be time to explore how to develop specialized and narrow curricula for such things - itself not a trivial task.

This will happen soon or not at all. The AMA and its equivalents worldwide have a very consistent attitude to anyone, anywhere being allowed to do anything a doctor can do. It should not be allowed. Psychologists should not be allowed prescribe; nurse practitioners should not be allowed practice independently under any circumstances, etc.

Pretty reasonable if you ask me. History is littered with quacks and snake oil salesmen. There is a reason why becoming a physician is such an arduous and selective process.

> History is littered with quacks and snake oil salesmen.

Indeed, doctors did more harm than good until the early 1900s at the earliest, and we can only be sure that they were on net leading to lower rather than higher mortality with the introduction of antibiotics.

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