Oops: Elon Musk Donated the Wrong Kind of Ventilator

[Vandelay Industries]

He promised life-saving ventilators. He delivered sleep apnea machines.

Over the last few days, Tesla CEO and bona fide public health disaster Elon Musk has scored a lot of praise and flattering press coverage for his promise to deliver medical ventilators to hospitals facing an overwhelming number of coronavirus cases.

Well, he delivered — sort of. Tesla purchased over a thousand surplus ventilators from the company ResMed and distributed them to hospitals (after slapping a Tesla logo on the boxes).

But, as Financial Times reports, there’s a bit of a problem. Instead of sending out the kind of ventilator that can save patients with severe cases of COVID-19, Musk actually donated BPAP machines designed to treat sleep apnea.

Tesla didn’t respond to Financial Times’ request for comment.

Now, to be fair, both BPAP and CPAP machines are known as noninvasive ventilators, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same as the invasive ventilators that hospitals are running low on.

Some experts have suggested that sleep apnea devices could help make it easier to breath for patients with milder coronavirus cases, according to Coronavirus Today.

“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,” ResMed CEO Mick Farrell told Financial Times. “We applaud any company who can help get ventilators and other respiratory products to those in need.”

But doctors have recommended against using the machines to treat coronavirus patients because they can actually facilitate disease transmission.

“In general, we’re just telling them not to use it,” Dr. Comilla Sasson, an emergency medicine specialist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told NPR. “Because we are concerned about community spread, and we have to assume that anybody with respiratory distress is a COVID patient.”

So yes, Elon promised and delivered a big shipment of medical devices. But not the ones that hospitals actually need right now.

READ MORE: Elon Musk promised ventilators. These are BPAP machines. [Financial Times]

More on Elon Musk: Elon Musk Is a Public Health Risk

[04 commemorative]

Hey....he tried

[dvarapala]

Like Elon Musk can be expected to know the subtle details of arcane medical devices; any one of us here would have made the exact same mistake. The purchase order said Ventilators; the fault lies with the idiots who sold them for not describing them clearly/accurately enough.

[Vandelay Industries]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

Like Elon Musk can be expected to know the subtle details of arcane medical devices; any one of us here would have made the exact same mistake. The purchase order said Ventilators; the fault lies with the idiots who sold them for not describing them clearly/accurately enough.

You'd think he might have been a little bit suspicious when he paid $1500 each for a bunch of BPAP machines, instead of $25,000 each for ventilators.

[z06psi]

Dumbfook.

[Steve_R]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

Like Elon Musk can be expected to know the subtle details of arcane medical devices; any one of us here would have made the exact same mistake. The purchase order said Ventilators; the fault lies with the idiots who sold them for not describing them clearly/accurately enough.

So the purchaser has no responsibility?

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by Steve_R

So the purchaser has no responsibility?

Ever buy something on eBay and had the seller's description of the item or its condition not match what you purchased? Is that your fault?

It happens on Amazon as well, especially with third-party "marketplace" sellers. Nothing the buyer can do to fact-check the seller's description until the item actually arrives.

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by Vandelay Industries

You'd think he might have been a little bit suspicious when he paid $1500 each for a bunch of BPAP machines, instead of $25,000 each for ventilators.

HTF is the average Joe supposed to know what regular ventilators cost? I sure as **** didn't.

I bet I could name 100 things that you couldn't even come close to guessing the price on because you never bought those things before.

But please, don't let that reality get in the way of a good Elon bashing opportunity.

[m and t's77]

This guy?

]

[Steve_R]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

Ever buy something on eBay and had the seller's description of the item or its condition not match what you purchased? Is that your fault?

Never bought anything on eBay. And I doubt Tesla bought them there.

Originally Posted by dvarapala

HTF is the average Joe supposed to know what regular ventilators cost? I sure as **** didn't.

I bet I could name 100 things that you couldn't even come close to guessing the price on because you never bought those things before.

But please, don't let that reality get in the way of a good Elon bashing opportunity.

Musk is not an “average Joe.”

[BOTY]

Originally Posted by m and t's77

This guy?

]

what could go wrong ?

[Denbelt]

Idiots? I'll bet they knew exactly what they were doing.

[markids77]

Originally Posted by 04 commemorative

Hey....he tried

Ummmm..... prolly not. I assume he has people to do that kind of thing for him. "Karen, I need a thousand ventilators; no not vibrators; VENTILATORS. And make sure you cut a wicked deal because we're buying in volume here. Now roll me another spliff please."

[Mick]

I admit to having a pretty vague understanding of exactly what a CPAP machine does and how it works, but from a high level beer-in-hand viewpoint, it appears to me that it wouldn't be all that hard to modify it to be a ventilator that is "non-invasive" so that it would work on milder cases of COVID19. Or am I just drunk already at 9 am?

[Vandelay Industries]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

HTF is the average Joe supposed to know what regular ventilators cost? I sure as **** didn't.

I bet I could name 100 things that you couldn't even come close to guessing the price on because you never bought those things before.

But please, don't let that reality get in the way of a good Elon bashing opportunity.

I'm sure you could name a lot more than 100! But if I offered to purchase a large number of that item....hell, even one of them if it costs 20-30k, then I would take 15 minutes to learn a little bit about it. Maybe Elon's google machine was broken that day. Yeah, that's it...that's the ticket.

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by Denbelt

Idiots? I'll bet they knew exactly what they were doing.

this was a PR effort; plain & simple. Musk and his handlers are high tech savy. If they didn't know the specifics of what they were buying... it's only because they were fixated on getting Musk some PR points, and not really to help in time of need.

Those in the Musk cult will squirm upon hearing this.

[Rob]

In the meantime...my co-workers are working on this

Open-source ventilator design - YouTube

[Raazor]

Originally Posted by Steve_R

So the purchaser has no responsibility?

I thought he was joking!

[Steve_R]

Originally Posted by Raazor

I thought he was joking!

Dougvarapala doesn't joke about Musk or Tesla, he's a devoted disciple.

[Rob]

https://apple.news/ABrdaCE0DReiKhuJZDD4s6w

Elon Musk is being criticized for appearing to send BiPAP machines, not life-support ventilators, to a hospital in New York.

In a tweet, New York City Hospitals thanked Musk and Tesla for sending "40 ventilators" to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York. The photo appears to show a BiPAP machine, which is more commonly used for problems like sleep apnea, rather than one of the larger, more expensive life-support ventilators that hospitals around the country are asking for to treat coronavirus patients.

Musk has said that he would supply ventilators to hospitals where there are shortages, and that he would use Tesla factories to produce some.

The ventilators sent to the hospital in Queens, however, appear to be made by a company called ResMed, which told the Financial Times that "we think it's great that Tesla purchased bilevel non-invasive ventilators," more commonly referred to as BiPAP machines. "We applaud any company who can help get ventilators and other respiratory products to those in need," the company said.
The use of BiPAP machines to treat coronavirus patients is controversial. Kaiser Health News reported that using the machines with a face mask could aerosolize the virus, causing it to potentially spread faster. The American Society of Anesthesiologists similarly said in February that using CPAP or BiPAP machines "may increase the risk of infectious transmission."

But, the FDA recently said that CPAP and BiPAP machines could be used as an alternative to traditional life-support ventilators as hospitals around the country face shortages of the larger, more complex and costly ventilators.

Musk said in a tweet on Thursday that "all hospitals were given exact specifications" of the machines, and that "all confirmed they would be critical." He added that delivery of more intensive ventilators made by Medtronic would be delivered in New York City Thursday evening.