NYC mayor asks Elon Musk to manufacture ventilators for COVID-19 patients

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday night that he’s willing to have his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, make crucial ventilators to help patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to take him up on that offer. De Blasio tweeted at Musk on Thursday morning, saying New York City “will need thousands [of ventilators] over the next few weeks,” despite already acquiring them “as fast as we can. ” The mayor said his team would reach out to Musk directly.

“We could use your help! ” he wrote. (After this article was published, Musk responded: “Sounds good, we will connect with your team to understand potential needs. ) Musk had tweeted that he’d have his teams make ventilators “if there’s a shortage,” and by all accounts, there will be.

The only reason it might not seem like there isn’t one currently in the US is that we haven’t yet exhausted the short supply. And while President Trump said he’s willing to invoke the wartime “Defense Production Act” on Wednesday to address the shortage, he tweeted later in the day that he’d only do so in a “worst case scenario. ” @elonmusk New York City is buying! Our country is facing a drastic shortage and we need ventilators ASAP — we will need thousands in this city over the next few weeks.

We’re getting them as fast as we can but we could use your help! We’re reaching out to you directly. Musk isn’t the first to propose using his company’s manufacturing facilities to make critical equipment.

“Just yesterday, General Motors said CEO Mary Barra told the White House she was looking into making ventilators at her company’s factories.”

Ford followed suit soon after. Musk is alone among those peers in underplaying the pandemic, though. He called the “panic” over the coronavirus “dumb,” compared the lethality of COVID-19 to car crashes (which are not contagious), and finished his Twitter conversation about ventilators on Wednesday night by again saying he thinks the “panic will cause more harm than the virus, if that hasn’t happened already. ” As for how Musk might approach making ventilators, the entrepreneur said they are “not difficult” to make.