Originally appeared at ZeroHedge
As a reminder, we have been reluctantly covering Musk’s “bizarre” actions surrounding the coronavirus pandemic: First, he called the panic around the virus “dumb”. Then, Musk came out and said kids were “essentially immune” to the virus despite the fact that there have been numerous reports of teenagers “fighting for their lives” on ventilators and passing away from the virus (source and source).
Then, Musk went to battle with Alameda County about keeping his Fremont factory open, all the while Tesla and SpaceX employees were contracting the coronavirus.
One has to exhale and ask, “What could possibly be next?”
Well, how about saying you’re going to donate ventilators in a half-hearted effort to try and end the PR fiasco hanging above your head, and then donating a bunch of sleep apnea machines instead?
Musk proclaimed on March 23 that he bought “1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night and airshipped them to LA”.
A couple of days later, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio was publicly thanking Musk for “donating hundreds of ventilators to New York City and State, including our public hospitals”. de Blasio said he was “deeply grateful”.
Then, yesterday, the NYC Health and Hospitals system Tweeted out a photograph of “40 ventilators” that were donated by Tesla to a hospital in queens. Many of the boxes sport a “ResMed” logo and printed out sheets of paper with the Tesla logo on them.
But then, a bit of reality sank in and the FT pointed out some “peculiar” items of note about these boxes. First is the fact that sitting on top of the boxes is a Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure, also called a “BiPAP” machine, which is used to treat sleep apnea. While these machines are sometimes referred to as “non-invasive ventilators”, these are not the ventilators that are commonly used in intensive care units for coronavirus.
In fact, it turns out that these machines may make things worse for coronavirus patients. As FT noted, The American Society of Anesthesiologists on February 23 issued guidance warning that CPAP and BPAP machines “may increase the risk of infectious transmission”.
Russ Mitchell of the LA Times put out a Tweet thread yesterday, stating that: “The head of Resmed medical device maker appeared on Cramer today and said the 1000 machines Musk said he would be donating were five-year old Resmed BiPap breathing devices, usually used to treat sleep apnea, which I presume were bought in bulk at deep discount.”
“BiPap devices are not the high-end highly desired invasive ventilators that hospitals so desperately need. (GM and Ford have partnered up with ventillator makers to manufacture these),” he continued.
Musk, meanwhile, continued to refer to these machines as “FDA approved”, because the FDA recently adopted an emergency policy that allowed these machines to be used – instead of actual ventilators – in the event of a shortage. When FT reached out to ResMed’s CEO, Mick Farrell, he put on his best PR hat and claimed that these machines could be used to fight Covid-19, stating:
The bilevels featured in Tesla’s tweet are built on the same platform as our S9 CPAP machines for sleep apnea but deliver non-invasive ventilation that can be beneficial to many COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe while trying to fight off this virus. We have seen large numbers of patients in China and across Europe that have been treated with non-invasive ventilation via bilevel devices.
… before confirming to FT that the machines Musk purchased were, in fact, sleep apnea machines:
We think it’s great that Tesla purchased bilevel non-invasive ventilators from a platform of ours that we developed five years ago in Asia and sent them to New York. We applaud any company who can help get ventilators and other respiratory products to those in need.
Surprise…Surprise…who would have thought that someone who builds tin-foil rockets & space-cars, would do sumthin’ stupid like that…
His cars are selling very well mind you. And the rockets are good enough for the US government.
Oh yes im sure he has been selling lots of cars lately.
And no the rockets are not good enough for us government, thats why the us purchasees rd180 rocket motors, from russia to boot.
Musk is a douchebag thats worshipped by nerds, kinda like how bill gates was worshipped by nerds 20 years ago.
Well spaken siarr!
What rockets flogged? And no he hardly sells cars but rather has desposits,infact there is present only 3 used teslars on the ozi market all east coast which suggests just a few of his overseas elects driven them,where otherwise 135k for a base version is simply not worth the bother,considering fuel beloe 80c/pr litre and the fact you cannot order any spares to fix the damn thing and their explosive rates are too high to norm!
Fool harcore engineer not,in the end china and russia did a great job helping ny the fake phoney and false(bar a few hundred) nwo/greens project fools no truth(period) And no it won’t change anything,because I never argue with the NWO idiot,forget it:
Anything is ‘good enough for the US government. The profit is not in what US equipment can successfully do, BUT in the amount of cash that can be squandered plundered by the US and Israeli corporations who sell the equipment.
what a fucking scam this guy is, he should be arrested, seems like almost everything in US is a scam nowadays
Its like he’s doing all this stupid shit on purpose I got a theory that elon musk is an alien
a retarded alien lol
Hang on These are EXCACTLY the type that the Formula One team got accolades by designing and manufacturing in record time in the UK.
They are essential for the less severe hospital cases that are not at the point of needing the Full Monty in the ICU with a team of 10+ medical staff per patient.
Please be reasonable about this , because these devices are useful and will prevent more patients having to be moved to ICU
Russias help is unsurpassed (period) Russia is rich,musk + nwo are not gold backed but fake (period)
Well, nobody will die snoring on Elons machines – and he could also give a ‘Not a Flamethrower’ with, if it all fails…
Is that for the cremation.
One indisputable fact has come out of the Covid19 deaths in Italy, US etc ,all with a few hundred deaths per day, is that the crematoria are struggling to burn the bodies.
If the fable of the Holocaust is to be believed, a few tens of coke fired crematoria were able to burn anything from the claimed 6 million to 1.5 billion who were said to be burned in eighteen months, :)
That’s 10,000 or 2,688 per DAY, :) Whichever figure is promoted. It was IMPOSSIBLE in 1944/5 and also today as we see in the US and Italy etc.