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).