Thousands of ventilators de Blasio commissioned for $12 million sell as scrap metal for less than $25K.
Over the last few weeks, 18-wheelers pulled up again and again to the City of New York’s huge supply warehouse in Queens to pick up dozens of unopened cartons containing what, during the depths of the pandemic, City Hall proclaimed would be lifesaving miracle devices known as “bridge vents.”
As the COVID pandemic overtook New York City in April 2020, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio commissioned 3,000 of the breathing devices as back-ups for the ventilators that kept sick patients alive, helping fund their manufacture even though they had never been tested in a New York City hospital setting.
“This is a story about doing the impossible,” de Blasio said at the time. “We’d never made a ventilator before — and so we made thousands. We learned it would take a year — and so we did it in a month. Our City is taking our future into our own hands. That’s how we’ll beat this crisis and prepare for the next.”
Taxpayers paid $12 million for the devices. The city Economic Development Corporation awarded Spiro Wave LLC, the group that built the devices, $100,000 in “seed money” and secured the rights to buy 70% of whatever was produced going forward.
De Blasio’s pandemic medical miracle has turned into a bargain-basement giveaway under current Mayor Eric Adams — with the bridge vents unloaded, unused, in an auction that ended Jan. 24, described in sale records as “non-functioning medical equipment sold as scrap metal.”
A junk dealer from Long Island picked up the entire $12 million, 500,000-pound kit and kaboodle — for only $24,600. It took the dealer 28 truckloads to cart the stuff away, auction records state.
Members and sponsors make THE CITY possible.
That’s just over $8 per device, way less than a penny back for every taxpayer dollar spent.
And that’s just the beginning.
www.thecity.nyc/2023/2/21/23607913/covid-bridge-vent-ppe-auction