Ferrari designs lower-cost ventilator for Covid-19 patients

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In the round-up: Ferrari has designed a “reliable, versatile, easy to use and assemble ventilator” which it says can be produced more cheaply than other models, to help Covid-19 Coronavirus patients.

What they say

The first prototype of the ventilator was built last week. Ferrari will share its design so others can manufacture it:

We as a Formula 1 team are during the official shutdown so we can’t work on the F1 car for the shut down that has been anticipated from the summer. So in this particular case, the FIA has granted an exception to all the teams for Covid-related activities. And so basically the few guys that there had been working on the project had been pulled out by the shutdown, working exclusively on this particular project with no F1 activities at this time. […]

As far as we are concerned the project is basically completed yesterday. It will be released to the world worldwide community in their open source manner so it will be available for everyone to pick it up and to… certify it in every country.

Within a given time, they will be able then to produce it, assemble and start testing it in a free way. So it will be really available for everyone to go for it. On our side, we’ve done our part here in this journey but of course we will be available for any need to support the development of the project.
Simone Resta

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari? It will never happen, says Craig:

Hamilton has been loyal to Mercedes for his entire career. And he knows that he’ll be rewarded handsomely by them, if he continues to do so. Don’t forget that Hamilton is 36 years old in January; he’ll almost certainly be retiring within the next five years (the vast majority of F1 drivers retire between 35-40 years old).

He’s already an ambassador for the Mercedes brand, and he’ll continue to be an ambassador for them, providing he stays loyal. Hamilton knows what a lucrative prospect this is – much more lucrative than a last gasp dash to Ferrari.
Craig Simons

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On this day in F1

  • 25 years ago today Michael Schumacher led a one-two for Benetton with team mate Johnny Herbert, while Nigel Mansell ended his F1 career

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18 comments on “Ferrari designs lower-cost ventilator for Covid-19 patients”

  1. If they put the prancing horse logo on the ventilator by Ferrari, it would quintuple the price, wouldn’t it? :)

    1. But recent findings have shown ventilators to be bad for Covid treatment.

      1. I’ll pass the note on to Ferrari.

      2. ColdFly (@)
        14th May 2020, 7:41

        ventilators to be bad for Covid treatment

        Why? How? OOliver
        Is it because it prolongs life of seriously ill patients and so keeping more IC beds and staff occupied?

        1. @coldfly I suspect ooliver wears hats of the foil persuasion. Either that or Elon musk has infected yet more minds with his dangerous nonsense.

        2. William Jones
          14th May 2020, 9:29

          They are using ventilators in a way that they would use to treat a different disease, which damages the lung in a different way. The end result is, the ventilators don’t have the 50% recovery rate of that disease, but more like a 20%. While that doctor was quite correct to point out that the rate was much lower because of this, that doesn’t mean that we can just change how we are ventilating patients and get a better result, it might be that 20% is already the best we will ever get. Nor does it mean that ventilating patients is bad or wrong. Of course it is if the patient isn’t going to die anyway, it’s invasive and destructive, but no-one is ventilating patients who can breath for themselves anyway.

          Ooliver has just listened to the more lurid parts of the press with less than a good scientific knowledge but a talent for generating clickbait who have reported that ventilation is killing 80% of patients etc. The truth is that it saves 20% and that’s the best we can do at the moment. The Doctor’s statement is the first, very important step of the scientific method, but he hasn’t presented a hypothesis of a better way, so there’s nothing to test to get better than 20%.

      3. Of course. Ferrari is evil. They did this just to hurt more people.

      4. What OOliver is probably referring to is that since the early stages of trying to save patients with Covid-19, doctors have learned that often the strategy for Ventilation they had been used to apply for best effect is not the right approach for Covid-19 patients, since something different is happening in their lungs.
        Currently it seems the best approach is to wait longer to put patients on ventilators, and to adjust the flow of air into the lungs to a less agressive regime, since they found it can actually hurt treatment if they go on too early and with too much forcd @peartree, @frood19, @selbbin, @coldfly

        It means that it now seems we need relatively complex ventilators (that was why the simpler type developed at Red Bull wasn’t picked up in mass quantities) because they can better finetune to the exact need. And we need far less than was thought at first.
        But since medical know how has been spread with great speed in this pandemic, I am confident that most doctors treating patients are aware of the latest developments with regards to our knowledge of treatment of patiens and can use these ventilators to good result, where needed.

        That said, we still need quite a significant amount of ventilators. Not to mention that having a cheaper, easier to build one available open source, can be a boon to worldwide medicine especially in the long list of countries and hospitals that did not have the option of having (enough) ventilators available for their patients until now.

      5. Well, ventilators are useful, however recent learning has shown a CPAP machine used to force air (in the same method as people with sleep apnea) into the lungs and maintain positive air pressure is a very effective method of treatment, as long as used early in the body’s defence against itself – often leading to patients not needing more invasive ventilation.

  2. Talking about Hamilton’s Loyalty, Schumacher was also loyal to Ferrari & he was also their brand ambassador. But then he quit F1 and joined again as a Mercedes driver.

    1. To be fair when Massa had his accident Schumacher wanted to jump in only his injury (due motorracing accident he had a year earlier) prefented his return.

      1. @macleod
        It was Luca Di Montezemolo who convinced Schumacher to return to racing after Massa’s incident only to be stopped by his neck injury. However, he didn’t know that the idea would grow into his mind to the point that it pushed him to join again as a Mercedes driver.

  3. ColdFly (@)
    14th May 2020, 8:13

    Hamilton has been loyal to Mercedes for his entire career.

    This has been said and quoted a lot, included by Lewis himself. But is it true?
    I understand he has been a McLaren junior driver since a very young age. McLaren happened to be partnering with Mercedes engines at that time. It’s like saying that I’ve been loyal to my mother in law ;)
    And we all know that the McLaren loyalty had its expiration date.

    1. @coldfly Lewis has or was sponsored by Mercedes not McLaren. Since the age of 13. I remember he ran merc f3, rosberg ran opel.

  4. Does the air from the Ferrari ventilator bypass the oxygen sensor and runs much richer than it should?

  5. Ironically it turns out ventilators have shown themselves to be detrimental to the problem because they force battered lungs to work overtime – something they can’t do when infected with COVID-19.

  6. The only reason Ferrari concocted this, supposed, ventilator is because their staff needed them after their dismal seasons over the last few years as they watched Sebastian Vettel implode.

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