Occams Razor this Corona

by Shivam Panda

Occam’s razor- a thought experiment attributed to a 14th century, English-French logician and philosopher by the name of Franciscan Friar William of Occam. His initial statement was “Entities shan’t be multiplied needlessly”.

He goes on to explain that in an imperfect world, one would observe a situation and contract certain problems with the situation, upon which the search for the solution to each problem would begin. In the endless search for a perfect solution he argues that the best solution is often the simplest. In the modern world, this statement is used extensively as a mental model in Science, the ‘Law of Parsimony’ in Economics and as a general idea to live by.

In times of dire straits, a few people remain grounded and find ways to help others by solving certain problems that have recently arose due to the corona pandemic, in efficient and simple ways. One such problem is ventilators, or rather the lack thereof. Ventilators are applications used frequently in modern medicine as a means of artificial respiration for those who symptomatically are unable to breathe. Till very recently the cost of the average, clinically approved ventilator was about 10,000 USD. Due to the new and innovative methods of production of ventilators, and due to the recent advancement in ventilator technology, net costs have come down to 2000 USD, just 20% of the initial price.

In 2017, Indian professor Dr. Deepak Agarwal and Diwakar Vaish, a robotics scientist, revolutionized Ventilator technology by compacting and simplifying the actual ventilator mechanics itself. Together they formed the company AgVa, the official producers of the world cheapest clinical ventilators, at 1.5 lakh rupees. The Indian Health Ministry placed an order for 1000 Ventilators earlier this month which was expected to be fulfilled on the first week of April 2020.

“The inactivated virus is trapped at the expiratory end by a positive charge system thereby protecting the environment” Dr. Agarwal said, who named his product the AgVa COVID(TOI).

While to the layman the ventilator is a complex piece of equipment, Julian Botta, a third-year residential at John Hopkins University for medical sciences, created a Google Doc containing all the necessities and intricate steps to build your own DIY Ventilator at home. “The doc, called 'Specifications for simple open-source mechanical ventilator,' is not affiliated in any way with Johns Hopkins, and is instead a purely personal pursuit for Botta.”(DailyMail-UK). The inspiration for this idea struck him when he saw the blueprints for CPAP (Continuous Positive Air-Pressure) machines, the machines used to treat sleep apnea, on various platforms like Reddit and GitHub. Gui Cavalcanti, an engineer based in San Francisco, has a Facebook page, namely ‘Open Source COVID 10 Medical Supplies' which informs its followers about medical ratings and approval systems for stuff like masks, sanitizers, ventilators etc. In the United Kingdom, a group of motivated hackers founded the ‘Coronavirus Tech Handbook’, which entailed DIY triage procedures, mask making steps and ventilators blueprints.

Following the trend of previous times of crisis, like in WW1/WW2, automobile factories have been repurposed to produce ventilators. As luck may have it, ventilators resemble the pumps and air conditioners used in cars. While the majority of the industry buy such appliances for their products from a secondary manufacturer, those who produce it in house have agreed to help. General motors, Ford, PSA, Renault, Volkswagen and more are just some companies around the globe who have agreed to help out in these testing times. The Mercedes Formula- 1 team, which was idle due to postponed/cancelled formula-1 races, started an initiative to collaborate with other Formula-1 teams, and have calculated an average of 1000 ventilators per day if at all the proposition goes through. 

“For Formula-1 and University of London Engineers, it took less than 100 hours from the initial meeting for the productions of the first prototype”(BBC)

New innovative technologies like 3-D printing are turning out to be extremely useful. Dr. Anand Sancheti, director of New Era Hospital, Nagpur, has created a device called a splitter, using this technology, now enabling one ventilator to be used by a maximum of eight patients simultaneously, that’s five more than the previous maximum capacity.

Devices like ventilators are crucial appliances and go through rigorous testing to meet approval standards and testing itself takes time. So, in this world race against the pandemic, time is of the essence, and even though we are pooling our resources to come up with faster ways of productions, time is a resource we do not have. So it is up to us to follow the simplest, most efficient, and overall best method to battle against this disease, that is hygiene and social distancing. Just as Occam's razor dictates, it may be the simplest solution, but it is the best solution.

- By Shivam Panda