Tesla Shipping Ventilators Worldwide

Tesla will leverage its worldwide delivery network to ship FDA-approved ventilators to hospitals in need, Chief Executive Elon Musk said Tuesday.

“We have extra FDA-approved ventilators,” Musk said in a tweet. “Will ship to hospitals worldwide within Tesla delivery regions. Device & shipping cost are free. Only requirement is that the vents are needed immediately for patients, not stored in a warehouse. Please [let] me or @tesla know.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/1245009716935188481

Hospitals are currently trying to secure ventilators to treat patients suffering from COVID-19. Cases are expected to grow significantly over the next two weeks.

Musk has already donated more than 1,200 ventilators to the city of Los Angeles and hundreds to be used in New York. Tesla is also preparing its factories in California and New York to manufacture ventilators through a partnership with Medtronic.

 

[Tam]

This is an issue that many hospitals are working through. Some of the ventilatiors need an additonal exit filter installed to assure that the virus is not circulated on exhale.

There are many types of ventilators. Some are for the more mild cases and help a patient breath easier, others add adjustable oxygen to the airway. The heaviest duty ones require a tube to be stuck (intubated) into the patients throat and do all the breathing for them.

Hospitals can use the weaker devices to keep the more healthy patients going until a stronger one can become available.

When the surge comes it will be "all hands on deck". Dr.s will use what ever is available to keep their patients alive until their own bodies can recover.

Kind of like using a space saver spare to get you home from a blowout. It is not the best tire in the world, but will get you home and buy you time until you can source and arrange a matching replacement. (know it is a bad analogy in a no spare tire Tesla, but gets the idea across.)

All of the above is very reasonable.

The problem is transparency.

If I am blind and I can't drive. So I need someone to drive me. Then a company tweets that it can! It can build a Fully Self Driving car for me!

That's the same as when my lungs go into failure, I can't breathe on my own, then a company tweets that it can build me a ventilator!

The problem with the Fully Self Driving Car right now is, I just can't command it to drive me it if I am blind.

That's the same as Tesla ventilator described above: It is not a life support machine if my lungs fail and I cannot breathe.

The good thing with Tesla Fully Self Driving Car right now is: It's pretty good for those who are not blind.

That's the same as Tesla ventilator described above: It is pretty good for those who can still breathe.

So, both the car and Tesla ventilators can still do very good things, but the communications need to be crystally clear and don't try to conceal the facts. Concealment looks bad!

Transparency, good explanation, faithful to the name of BiPAP as printed on the boxes and sales invoice would have avoided all this bad publicity.

 

[TheLocNar]

Seeing how the Trump admin is outbidding states and buying equipment out from under them, I guess anything is better than nothing at this point, even if the “wrong” equipment has to be converted/tweaked. I just can’t believe the Fed is doing this. And then there’s Jared going on national tv saying federal reserves aren’t for the states to use. JFC.

 

[Uncle Paul]

This would have been considered "looking a gift horse in the mouth" in earlier days.

Same thing with people going around pointing fingers of blame at every imperfection they see with the way people are handling this epidemic. Easy to blame others when sitting at your comfy keyboard. (kind of like I am doing myself as well)

Concentrating on every possible negative angle is perhaps not the most welcome thing during a crisis.

Making a positive difference is much better than just negative tirades.

 

[Tam]

This would have been considered "looking a gift horse in the mouth" in earlier days.

Same thing with people going around pointing fingers of blame at every imperfection they see with the way people are handling this epidemic. Easy to blame others when sitting at your comfy keyboard. (kind of like I am doing myself as well)

Concentrating on every possible negative angle is perhaps not the most welcome thing during a crisis.

Making a positive difference is much better than just negative tirades.

Agreed.

Words matter.

Suppose I need to send a message quickly on foot from the battlefield to the headquarter and there's no cars, bikes, or electronics... and someone offers me a horse!

When the PR picture released with the messenger and the horse: It turns out that the horse is really a mule.

Don't get me wrong. A mule is still very valuable but that is not what in mind when I need to send a message quickly.

So, the gift of a mule is also very much appreciated but please, don't release a public relations announcement describing it as a horse because the public might be knowledgeable enough to spot the difference if someone takes a picture!