Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has donated 1,000 ventilators to the Government of California in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, he sourced around 1200 ventilators from China and got them quickly air-shipped to Los Angeles Airport (LAX).
A couple hundred ventilators are still at Tesla‘s disposal which Elon Musk is willing to donate to hospitals and governments in need — providing the ventilators on such short notice, the Governor of California Gavin Newsom acknowledge Elon Musk’s act as a ‘heroic effort’, reported Bloomberg.
Elon Musk also tweeted on this situation and said that China had some excess supply of ventilators of which they started mass production 2 months ago when the coronavirus outbreak had hit the country hard. Tesla also delivered around 100,000 N95 masks to UCLA and Washington’s health facilities yesterday, the new aid of ventilators means a lot in coping with the epidemic at this point of time.
Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2020
According to Office of the Governor of California, there still is a need of 9,000 more ventilators, 30 million N95 masks, and other related safety supplies, the office posted the following tweet with their requirements:
This week, CA began receiving supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile including N95 masks, surgical masks, face shields, surgical gowns, coveralls & gloves.
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) March 21, 2020
CA has also requested 30 million masks, 10k ventilators, 2 million test swabs & more. https://t.co/mDWwK2bHkL pic.twitter.com/zpW8WKgR5F
The heroic effort of Elon Musk as described by the Governor was misrepresented by mainstream media, like the Bloomberg article we linked above has the headline “Virus Skeptic Musk Donates Ventilators in What Governor Calls ‘Heroic Effort’” — this did not bode well with Elon Musk and his fans, criticizing philanthropic work in the current global situation is harmful to the cause for sure, just during this writing Elon Musk and his followers reacted to this on Twitter as follows:
True. @MikeBloomberg, this is accurate. You believe in journalistic integrity, but if something isn’t done, this will continue.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2020
I usually try to keep criticism fairly objective & not attack anyone directly, but frankly, *fuck* Bloomberg. Fuck them for calling @elonmusk a “virus skeptic” in this article, fuck them for constantly trying to discredit him, no matter how much energy he puts into helping others pic.twitter.com/59JsiIjkzD
— Viv 🐉 (@flcnhvy) March 24, 2020