Project Apollo: Ford, GE, and 3M lead America’s corporate mobilization war on COVID-19
Corporate America puts on its war cape... In World War II, Ford produced B-24 bombers to help the war effort. Today we're fighting a very different battle against an invisible foe: COVID-19. Now, Ford and its corporate peers are stepping up to try and provide the "weapons" we need to virus-fight.
- Doctors and nurses need to be healthy to treat and help sick people. To protect them, we need filtering masks and respirators — but there's a serious shortage.
- To treat really sick people having trouble breathing, we need ventilators — but there's a more massive shortage of those. NY has just 7K of the 30K ventilators it expects needing to treat a surge in hospitalized patients.
Reducing the supply gap... American corporations are teaming up to help slash the shortage for respirators and ventilators:
- 3M and Ford will produce a new Powered Air-Purifying Respirator to protect healthcare workers from the virus. They'll also boost production of 3M's current respirator product.
- Fiat will produce up to 1M masks to donate to emergency personnel, while Ford is creating disposable respirators from 3D printers (could produce at least 1K/month once approved).
- Ford is working with GE to boost production of GE Healthcare ventilators, while GM will team up with Ventec Life Systems to majorly increase ventilator production.
- PS: Ford's calling this "Project Apollo", because the Apollo 13 mission had to build ventilators in a life-or-death emergency (kind similar to right now).
The Defense Production Act is the next step... The DPA gives the federal government power to force and incentivize businesses to produce goods required for national defense. The White House used the DPA for the 1st time during the COVID-19 pandemic yesterday, to get 60K testing kits. Despite corporate America's voluntary efforts, we might need a lot more DPA-usage to get the ventilators and respirators we need.