Elon Musk promised ventilators. These are BPAP machines.
A few days later, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was thanking him for “donating hundreds of ventilators to New York City and State, including our public hospitals”, saying he was “deeply grateful”.
Fair play, we thought. At least he seems to be trying to help, rather than mounting some silly
PR stunt, like, we dunno, building a kid-size submarine or something. We were a bit confused, however, by how it seemed so easy for him to procure over 1,000 ventilators when the rest of the world’s governments seemed to be suffering from such a dire shortage.
On Wednesday, we got a sneak peek of some of these ventilators:
(Notice the carefully stickie-taped Tesla-logo A4 printouts covering the boxes, even though these machines are not made by Tesla but rather, as you can see, ResMed. Wouldn’t want to miss out on a
PR opportunity.)
You might also be surprised to see there, on top of the boxes, not a ventilator, but a BPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure, also called a “BiPAP” machine), which is used to treat sleep apnoea by maintaining a consistent breathing pattern at night (it’s very similar to a CPAP machine, but it has two pressure settings rather than just one).
Now BPAP and CPAP machines are sometimes called “non-invasive ventilators”, but these are not the ventilators that can be used in intensive care units, which are invasive ventilators that deliver oxygen to the lungs and are used as part of life support.
These invasive ventilators are the ones that much of the world is in such desperate need of. BPAP and CPAP machines are not normally called ventilators at all, and are far more common: according to Forbes there are more than 8 million CPAP users in the US alone.
As we wrote in an article last week, some techy types have been looking at ways in which CPAP machines could be repurposed to help with Covid-19. But even this would not be for the severe cases that require intensive care.
And there have even been warnings that CPAP or BPAP machines could make things worse. The American Society of Anesthesiologists on February 23 issued guidance warning that CPAP and BPAP machines “may increase the risk of infectious transmission”.
To give you an idea of quite how different a BPAP machine is from an ICU-grade ventilator, one of these bad boys will set you back around $800. That’s if you can still buy them — the machines that Musk and Tesla appear to have delivered to New York are the ResMed S9 Elite, which have now been discontinued. A ventilator, meanwhile, can cost as much as $50,000. So over 60 times more, in other words.
Two days ago, Musk said he had more of these “FDA-approved ventilators”, and that he was willing to ship them worldwide:
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/01/1585782924000/Elon-Musk-promised-ventilators--These-are-BPAP-machines-/