Razer has created a concept reusable N95 respirator called Project Hazel, featuring Chroma RGB LEDs and microphones and amplifiers to project your voice. The Verge reports: It’s a concept design with a glossy outside shell made of waterproof and scratch-resistant recycled plastic, which is transparent to allow for lip-reading and seeing facial cues when you chat with people. Currently, there isn’t…
Tag: ventilators
71-Year-Old Slashdot Reader Describes His ‘Moderate’ Case of Covid
71-year-old Hugh Pickens (Slashdot reader #49,171) is a physicist who explored for oil in the Amazon jungle, commissioned microwave communications systems in Saudi Arabia, and built satellite control stations for Goddard Space Flight Center around the world including Australia, Antarctica, and Guam. After retiring in 1999, he wrote over 1,400 Slashdot posts, and in the site’s 23-year history still remains one…
Why the Pandemic Is So Bad in America
A virus has brought the world’s most powerful country to its knees. From a report: A pandemic can be prevented in two ways: Stop an infection from ever arising, or stop an infection from becoming thousands more. The first way is likely impossible. There are simply too many viruses and too many animals that harbor them. Bats alone could host thousands…
Right to Repair Advocates Accuse Medical Device Manufacturers of Profiteering
A new Motherboard article interviews William, a ventilator refurbisher who’s repaired at least 70 broken ventilators that he’s bought on eBay and from other secondhand websites, then sold to U.S. hospitals and governments to help handle a spike in COVID-19 patients. He’s part of a grey-market supply chain that’s “essentially identical to one used by farmers to repair John Deere tractors…
‘Coronavirus: Dexamethasone Proves First Life-Saving Drug’
Dr_Ish shares a BBC report: A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus. The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say. The drug is part of the world’s biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus….
Ventilators may not be the best treatment for severe covid-19
Ventilators may not be the best treatment for covid-19 patients with severe breathing difficulties, as they can worsen lung damage in some cases Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2244362-ventilators-may-not-be-the-best-treatment-for-severe-covid-19/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
‘Project BioMed’ Fights for the Right to Repair Medical Devices
Long-time Slashdot reader chicksdaddy writes: One of the less-reported stories of this pandemic is the myriad of ways in which COVID has exposed changes to the medical device market and the increasingly draconian software licensing practices that have made servicing and repairing medical devices much more difficult, slow and expensive. In its latest episode, Security Ledger Podcast goes behind the scenes…
Belkin, the Company That Makes iPhone Cables, Pivots To Ventilators
Belkin International, the company that makes iPhone charging cables and home routers, has started making what it calls “low-cost” ventilators at manufacturing plants in Providence, Rhode Island. USA Today reports: These are sub-$200 units aimed for emergencies and less severe cases of COVID-19, compared to more full-featured units that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. “This is one of…
Largest Study To Date Finds Hydroxychloroquine Doesn’t Help Coronavirus Patients
A new hydroxychloroquine study — “the largest to date” — was published Thursday in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. It concluded that Covid-19 patients taking the drug “do not fare better than those not receiving the drug,” reports Time:
Dr. Neil Schluger, chief of the division of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at Columbia, and his team studied more…
People put on ventilators for covid-19 may need lengthy rehabilitation
Healthcare systems need to prepare for the extensive physiotherapy and mental rehabilitation that people put on ventilators for covid-19 will need as they recover Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241664-people-put-on-ventilators-for-covid-19-may-need-lengthy-rehabilitation/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…