Buzzfeed News reports:
On March 27, as emergency rooms in New York and across the country began filling with coronavirus patients struggling to breathe, President Donald Trump posted on Twitter to urge Ford and General Motors to “START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!” One of the thousands of replies that the tweet attracted struck an equally urgent tone: “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT.”
Its author was Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley. A specialist in mobile phone technology, he currently has just 75 followers on Twitter and no apparent experience in government contracting or medical devices. But three days later, New York state paid Oren-Pines $69.1 million. The payment was for 1,450 ventilators — at an astonishing $47,656 per ventilator, at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models.
Read the full article. It’s really something.
A Silicon Valley engineer with no medical supply background tweeted at Trump saying he could provide ventilators. Days later, New York state paid him $69.1 million — at the recommendation of the White House task force. But the ventilators never arrived. https://t.co/4UKHra8Wgt
— Emma Loop (@LoopEmma) April 29, 2020
NEW: An engineer who replied to a Trump tweet got $69 million from New York State for ventilators. He has no apparent background in medical supplies but was recommended by the White House. https://t.co/iAVLvDSVZ0
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 29, 2020
Three days after Yaron Oren-Pines sent this reply, New York paid him $69.1 million for 1,450 ventilators — an astonishing $47,656 per ventilator. Not a single ventilator ever arrived, the state since terminated the contract, and is now trying to recover its money pic.twitter.com/NscQxXZcoC
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 29, 2020