Nobody really got a chance to put any new ventilators to the test.
As wary as I am of the situation, we never really saw anyone given a chance to see what those ventilator inventors would have been able to do.
> "Yaron Oren-Pines, who is listed as CEO 0f InCommon in San Jose on both Twitter and LinkedIn, responded to a tweet sent by President Donald Trump on March 27 calling for General Motors and Ford to immediately begin making ventilators. Oren-Pines responded to the president's tweet, saying, "We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and non-invasive. Have someone call me URGENT." Oren-Pines has not tweeted since.
Three days later, according to BuzzFeed, New York apparently paid Oren-Pines $69,102,000 for 1,450 ventilators, or $47,656 per ventilator. It was the second-largest purchase made by the state of New York for coronavirus-related medical supplies, according to an analysis by the Albany Times-Union.
To date, New York has received no ventilators from Oren-Pines.
A state official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told BuzzFeed that New York made the deal with Oren-Pines on the recommendation of the White House coronavirus task force. The state has since ended the contract, and is attempting to recover the money."
* https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/NY-paid-Bay...
* https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/silicon-valley-engineer-tw...
And there's more Silicon Valley Tech CEO medical device wanna-be pretenders:
* https://abc7.com/california-coronavirus-cases-ventilators-me...
And here's ya boy Elon Musk faking-it and never making-it:
* https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article241982586.h...
* https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/16/...
This is either sheer incompetence or brazen corruption.
In my experience, it's usually the former, but I'm having trouble believing that this one isn't the latter.
Everything about the White House coronavirus task force has screamed "corruption" the whole way down.
From this article [1], one of several such investigations:
> Many of the volunteers were told to prioritize tips from political allies and associates of President Trump, tracked on a spreadsheet called “V.I.P. Update,”
> Few of the leads, V.I.P. or otherwise, panned out, according to a whistle-blower memo written by one volunteer and sent to the House Oversight Committee.
> ...personal relationships and loyalty are often prized over governmental expertise, and private interests are granted extraordinary access and deference.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/jared-kushner-fema-cor...
In my recollection, it was far less Silicon Valley CEOs, and more open-source hardware enthusiasts crowdsourcing 3D printer designs. Some of them looked as if they could potentially work, but, of course, it also seemed potentially an incredible amount of hubris.