Another Covid ventilator scandal in Canada

An Access to Information request has turned up another Canadian government contract, of almost a quarter of a Billion dollars, for Covid-19 ventilators which ended up being scrapped – in this case because they failed safety tests.  

Taxpayers charged premium for Québec-made COVID ventilators now junked as scrap metal | Western Standard | Western Standard News Service:

August 11, 2024 - "Taxpayers were billed top dollar for Québec-made COVID-19 ventilators that were later discarded as scrap metal, according to Access to Information records. Blacklock's Reporter says a contract worth $231.7 million to purchase ventilators at $28,250 each was signed after then-Industry Minister Navdeep Bains had a private discussion with the company’s CEO....

"CAE Incorporated of Montréal, formerly Canadian Aviation Electronics, received $231,650,000 for 8,200 ventilators, equating to $28,250 per unit. This was the highest price the Public Health Agency paid for any Canadian ventilator during the pandemic. 'When it comes to CAE, it’s a great Canadian success story,' Bains testified during 2020 hearings of the Commons industry committee....

"Despite never having manufactured ventilators, CAE received its contract on April 9, just days before Bains’ testimony. The devices later failed Department of Health safety tests....

"CAE rehired approximately 1,500 employees who had been laid off at the start of the pandemic and received a cash advance to manufacture the ventilators. The terms of the advance payment were not disclosed, though other firms received advances between $20 million and $40 million.

"Records indicate the Department of Health paid CAE a premium of 25 to 49% more than it paid other suppliers. The $28,250 per CAE device compared to $23,730 per ventilator from Baylis Medical of Montréal, $22,600 per ventilator from StarFish Medical of Toronto, and $18,993 per ventilator from Thornhill Medical of North York, Ont. 'We went from a letter of intent to a purchase order, and now they will be delivering the ventilators in a matter of weeks,' Bains said at the time. 'This is really promising news for us because we are in a position to help not only Canadians but possibly other jurisdictions and other countries as well.'

"None of the CAE devices were known to be used in any medical setting. Documents reveal that of the 8,200 CAE ventilators delivered at taxpayers’ expense, 8,180 — or 99% — were “slated for sale as scrap metal.” Records did not disclose what the Public Health Agency did with the remaining 20 devices.

"Government caucus members defended the CAE contract at the time....  'Canadians needed to feel that ventilators would be accessible if ever the second wave were to come and they finally would need a hospital and extra help because of the virus,' said Liberal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos (Saint-Laurent, Que.) during a 2020 hearing of the Commons ethics committee. CAE’s plant is located in Lambropoulos’ riding....

"Records show the Covid ventilators were immediately warehoused and then auctioned off as scrap metal as early as 2021.Lambropoulos did not respond to questions from Blacklock’s Reporter. Bains resigned from the cabinet on January 12, 2021, and left Parliament eight months later. He is currently an executive with Rogers Communications in Toronto."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/taxpayers-charged-premium-for-qu%C3%A9bec-made-covid-ventilators-now-junked-as-scrap-metal/56665

Not just in Canada: NYC sells $12M of emergency ventilators as scrap metal | FOX 5 New York | February 21, 2023: 

Canadian gov't selling unused ventilators as scrap

During the Covid pandemic, the Canadian government spent $700 million to buy more than 27,000 ventilators, though just 500 were ever used in Canadian hospitals. Now they are selling off the rest as scrap metal. 

Canada’s brand new $169.5M ‘emergency’ ventilators sold as scrap for $6 a carton | Western Standard | Jen Hodgson:

April 13, 2024 - "The Trudeau Liberal government spent $169.5 million on a sole-sourced contract for emergency ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic, which are now being sold off as cheap scrap parts. Ventilator parts were sold for as little as $6 a carton out of a Concord, ON by GC Surplus — a government-owned ... Department of Public Works division [which] sells used government-issue goods from autos to filing cabinets, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. The 'Canadian Emergency Ventilators' were listed for auction as 'scrap metal.' 

"Luke Halstead, a paramedic from Petawawa, ON, bought 50 of the disassembled units at a bargain of $6 a piece. They were still in their original factory wrapping. 'I bought 50. About half of them were in their original shipping crates with the Canadian Emergency Ventilators stencil on the box. They were brand new. They even had the original factory plastic wrapping'.... 

"The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)  contracted the 'Canadian Emergency Ventilators' from a Toronto-based company called StarFish Medical.... 

"Public Works would not say how much it paid for the devices, though the House of Commons Ethics Committee in 2020 was told the $169.5 million contract was payment for 7,500 devices, the equivalent of $22,600 apiece....

"Halstead ... was told by warehouse workers they 'continued to receive these ventilators well into 2022.... The warehouse workers told me they were originally shipped as parts and that the Public Health Agency was supposed to assemble the units. It was obvious the crates had never been opened. These parts were heavy grade sheet metal still in the factory plastic wrap. They still had the original shipping labels'....

"In 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had initially praised the manufacturer as a Canadian success story. 'Canadian companies are answering the call,' Trudeau said, at the time. 'This is exactly the kind of innovative and collaborative thinking we need.'
Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/canadas-brand-new-1695m-emergency-ventilators-sold-as-scrap-for-6-a-carton/53658

Canadian ventilators sold for scrap metal: Report | Toronto Sun | Postmedia News:

April 22, 2024 - "Records show that the Public Health Agency auctioned off new ventilators, valued at just over $22,000 each, for $6 scrap, violating its own rules, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.... PHA directives forbids licensed medical devices to be sold as scrap metal.

“'They were sold for parts as the possible divestment option for unlicensed medical devices,' the agency said in a statement to Blacklock’s. 'The medical devices were no longer authorized.' But documents show the ventilators were sold as such as late as Feb. 8, 2023 while still licensed by the Department of Health. The ... licenses were revoked weeks later on March 22 after dozens of units were scrapped.

"StarFish Medical of Toronto was awarded a $169.5 million sole-sourced contract in 2020 to deliver up to 7,500 devices at $22,600 apiece. The devices were among $700 million worth of rush orders for ventilators placed by the Department of Public Works as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company has declined comment...

"A total of 40,547 ventilators were ordered from various manufacturers but only 27,025 were delivered and only 500 ever used.... While most ventilators remained in federal warehouses, 839 were donated to hospitals in India, Pakistan and Nepal or sent to Ukraine as war surplus, according to a March 25 Inquiry Of Ministry, tabled in the Commons."
Read more: https://torontosun.com/news/national/canadian-ventilators-sold-for-scrap-metal-report

~30,000 in USA killed by ventilators in Apr. 2020

An Estimated 30,000 Americans Were Killed by Ventilators & Iatrogenesis in April 2020 | Substack - Michael P Senger, The New Normal:

October 5, 2022- "To date, we still don’t have especially good studies on the actual causes of excess deaths by state and country when the world first went into lockdown in spring 2020. For political reasons, these deaths were all generally been lumped together as 'Covid deaths,' but this coding was appallingly sloppy. According to the World Health Organization’s [WHO] initial coding guidance, if a decedent had either tested positive ... using a PCR test ... or been in contact with anyone who had within several weeks prior to their death, then the death should be classified as a 'Covid death'....

"Thus, this article reexamines data from the US CDC on all-cause excess deaths by state during peak lockdown in April 2020 using the information we now know to determine what actually caused them. This examination concludes that, contrary to popular belief, there was no uniquely deadly strain or variant emanating out of New York in spring 2020; this is clear from the fact that several states close to New York such as Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine experienced little to no excess deaths during that time period. On the contrary, over 30,000 Americans appear to have been killed by mechanical ventilators or other forms of medical iatrogenesis throughout April 2020, primarily in the area around New York.

"This result is not altogether surprising, as subsequent studies revealed a 97.2% mortality rate among those over age 65 who were put on mechanical ventilators in accordance with the initial guidance from the WHO — as opposed to a 26.6% mortality rate among those over age 65 who weren’t put on mechanical ventilators — before a grassroots campaign put a stop to the practice by the beginning of May 2020. As one doctor later told the Wall Street Journal, 'We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic'…... 

"The ... area around New York experienced a particular hysteria for the use of mechanical ventilators in spring 2020 to an extent that other states did not.... [W]e can get a sense for the level of this hysteria from the hundreds of headlines advocating mechanical ventilators that sprung up around that time. "For example, Google yields hundreds of results for the query 'New York mechanical ventilators 2020.' A sample of the hundreds of headlines are ones such as: 'NY may need 24,000 more ventilators to fight COVID-19. Here’s how it could get them,' 'Which coronavirus patients will get life-saving ventilators? Guidelines show how hospitals in NYC, US will decide,' 'New York City Needs 400 Ventilators by Sunday, de Blasio Says,' 'Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces 1,000 Ventilators Donated to New York State,' 'A New York hospital is treating two patients on a device intended for one.” Likewise, Google yields hundreds of results for the query 'New Jersey mechanical ventilators 2020'.... This phenomenon was not nearly as pronounced in other states.....

"Given we now know that patients over age 65 were more than 26 times as likely to survive if they were not placed on mechanical ventilators, it’s not hard to see how this hysteria for mechanical ventilators in the New York area accounted for the particularly high excess death rates in that region. Additionally, because the neighboring states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine experienced little to no excess deaths during this time period, the overuse of mechanical ventilators and other medical iatrogenesis in spring 2020 provides a far more robust explanation for the particularly high rates of excess deaths in the New York area than does a particularly deadly strain or variant.

"So just how many people were killed by the overuse of mechanical ventilators and other iatrogenesis in spring 2020?... [W]e can form a conservative estimate based on the data above by using the percentage of excess deaths in a comparable state that did not experience as much ventilator hysteria.... 

"Michigan also experienced a high percentage of excess deaths per capita in April 2020. Michigan is even colder than New York and New Jersey in terms of its climate, and its low-income urban centers are even more dense, both of which were primary factors correlating with excess deaths in spring 2020. Like New York and New Jersey, Michigan also had a strict lockdown at that time. However, Michigan did not experience nearly the same level of hysteria for mechanical ventilators as did the New York area, and Michigan’s rate of excess deaths, while high, was more in line with that of other states. Thus, we can assume that if New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had not engaged in ventilator hysteria, then their percentages of excess deaths per capita would have been more similar to that of Michigan....

"By subtracting the number of excess deaths that each state would have experienced if their excess death rate had been the same as that of Michigan from the number of excess deaths they actually experienced each week, we can see that in total, during April 2020, approximately 17,289 deaths in New York City, 7,347 deaths in New Jersey, 803 deaths in Massachusetts, 788 deaths in Connecticut, and 3,725 deaths in New York outside New York City were attributable to the overuse of mechanical ventilators or other iatrogenesis. All told, this data indicates that some 30,000 patients in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were killed by mechanical ventilators or other medical iatrogenesis in April 2020."

Read more: https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/an-estimated-30000-americans-were

Invasive ventilation

'First Choice': How China and the WHO created mass ventilator hysteria | The Dossier - Jordan Shachtel:

September 30, 2020 - "Mechanical ventilators have long been considered a last resort solution for treating patients with respiratory illness.... In treating respiratory ailments, the highly invasive, high-risk maneuver that is mechanical ventilation is usually prefaced by less invasive measures, such as positive airway pressure machines like CPAP or BiPAP devices, or simple oxygen delivering nose prongs. But when COVID-19 hit, the long established scientific guidance on proper patient care was tossed out the window, along with other established norms....

"In early March, when COVID-19 was ravaging western Europe and sounding alarm bells in the United States, the WHO [World Health Organization] released COVID-19 provider guidance documents to healthcare workers. Citing experience 'based on current knowledge of the situation in China,' the WHO recommended mechanical ventilators as an early intervention for treating COVID-19 patients. The guidance recommended escalating quickly, if not immediately, to mechanical ventilation. In doing so, they cited the guidance being presented by Chinese medical journals, which published papers in January and February claiming that 'Chinese expert consensus' called for 'invasive mechanical ventilation' as the 'first choice' for people with moderate to severe respiratory distress.

"The WHO further justified this approach by claiming that the less invasive positive air pressure machines could result in the spread of aerosols, potentially infecting healthcare workers with the virus. The aerosol spread problem, however, is more or less a very  loose hypothesis. There remains questionable evidence that COVID-19 spreads through aerosols from airway pressure or oxygen devices. And there are established protocols for protecting medical workers from potential aerosol infection when using these devices....

"Seeing the situation in Wuhan unfold, and evaluating the guidance passed on from China and the WHO, U.S. 'public health experts' became convinced that ventilators were an absolute necessity, and that we needed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more of these devices, to stave off the disease. Hysterical epidemiological modelers, the same ones that had just claimed millions of people were about to die from COVID-19 in the United States, took to claiming that there was a mass ventilator shortage in the United States. Governors across the country were now demanding ventilators by the boatload.

"After much bipartisan insistence from Congress, the president ordered U.S. manufacturers to build ventilators under the Defense Production Act. Based on the Wuhan experience, the United States was taking China and the WHO at its word, and reorienting some of our private industry economic engines towards building medical devices. Meanwhile, ... China was now exporting ventilators in incredible quantities. Under the guise of humanitarian behavior, China was making a fortune off of manufacturing and exporting ventilators (many of which did not work correctly and even killed patients) around the world.

"Meanwhile, as COVID-19 case growth exploded in New York City, some doctors began to notice that something was horribly wrong with the way patients were being treated for the disease. The COVID-19 guidance coming out of China, and being distributed in English by the World Health Organization, wasn’t working. In New York City, early and often ventilator use became a common theme, and it had devastating consequences for infected patients caught in the middle of the hysteria.

"On March 31, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, who had been caring for ICU patients at one of the hardest-hit hospitals in the city, sounded the alarm about the ventilator issue. He took to YouTube and became something of a ventilator whistleblower.... An April Reuters interview with dozens  of medical specialists made it clear that mechanical ventilator overuse had become a global issue.... By May, it was common knowledge in the medical community that early ventilator use was hurting, not helping COVID-19 patients, and that less invasive measures were in fact very effective in assisting recoveries. However, by then, the damage had already been done....

"The 'early action' ventilator guidance from China, which was distributed to the world by the WHO, very likely resulted in many lives taken from us far too soon. To my knowledge, neither WHO nor the Chinese government (which controls its medical associations) has acknowledged this catastrophic misstep."

Read more: https://dossier.substack.com/p/first-choice-how-china-and-the-who

UK gov't spent £500M on unneeded ventilators

Covid: UK spent £569m on 20,900 ventilators but most remain unused | The Guardian - Denis Campbell:

September 30, 2020 - "The [United Kingdom] government spent £569m [$973 million CDN] buying 20,900 ventilators to keep people alive during the Covid-19 pandemic but lack of demand means NHS hospitals have used just a few of them. All but 2,150 [10.3%] of the machines it bought are still being held in a Ministry of Defence warehouse in case they are needed in the coming second wave of the disease.

"That is the conclusion of a National Audit Office (NAO) investigation into the costs of ministers’ scramble to buy tens of thousands of mechanical ventilators in March and what it achieved. Whitehall’s spending watchdog found that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Cabinet Office paid a lot more than usual for the devices but were right to do so given the threat to life....

"The DHSC tried to source most of the extra devices it was seeking from China. However, intense global demand meant it had to pay suppliers upfront, but without any assurance the ventilators would be high quality. In one case it spent £2.2m on 750 transport ventilators, which ended up not being used when doctors said they were unsuitable for patients in intensive care.

"Despite both departments vigorously pursuing more of the machines from mid-March, they had only acquired 1,800 extra by the time the peak of the pandemic struck in mid-April. And they missed the government target to increase the NHS’s stock of ventilators from only 7,400 at the start of the crisis to 18,000 by the end of April and 30,000 by the end of August. 

"However, no patient with Covid who needed to undergo mechanical ventilation had been left without one. On 14 April, the day Covid admissions peaked in English hospitals, the NHS in England had 6,818 beds available with ventilators. However, just 2,849 were occupied by Covid patients, another 1,031 were taken by those with other ailments and the other 2,938 were empty....

"The DHSC spent £292m in total, including £244m (excluding VAT) buying 11,100 ventilators and £45m on other oxygen therapy devices.... The Cabinet Office spent £277m. However, £113m [$193 CDN] of that went on 'design costs, components and factory capacity for ventilators it did not buy'....

"Meg Hillier, the MP who chairs the Commons public accounts committee, said:...  'We were lucky the worst-case scenario didn’t come to pass before the extra ventilators had arrived. However, the NHS is now much better prepared for whatever happens next. DHSC and the Cabinet Office ... have set a benchmark for procurement during the pandemic.'" 

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/uk-spent-569m-on-20900-ventilators-for-covid-care-but-most-remain-unused 

How the Cuomovirus ravaged New York

Andrew Cuomo's Coronavirus Response Has Been a Failure | Reason - Billy Binton:

July 17, 2020 -"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ... has been the subject of several fawning media interviews over the course of the last few months, many of them conducted by his own brother, CNN's Chris Cuomo.... This past Monday he appeared on Jimmy Fallon's first night back.... Fallon praised how 'honest' and 'smart' Cuomo is. 'We're just worried the infections are going to come from the other states now, back to New York, and that would be a tragedy," Cuomo said....

"Passing the buck to other states is a savvy political move. But it obscures Cuomo's own response to COVID-19. As of today, New York has seen more than 32,000 of its residents die from the disease. That's more than seven times the deaths in Florida, about nine times the deaths in Texas, and more than four times the deaths in California.... Of the state's total, more than 22,000 deaths came from New York City....

"Cuomo certainly isn't to blame for all of the state's troubles. Plenty of politicians performed poorly, from President Donald Trump down to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and some factors were outside any official's control. But the governor did plenty wrong....

"In late March, when COVID-19 measures were still in their nascent stages, not much was known about the virus. One thing that was known, though, was that the elderly were significantly more at risk to die should they contract it. Yet Cuomo issued a mandate requiring nursing homes to accept residents who had tested positive for COVID-19, including those who were still at risk for spreading the disease to others. Since then, around 6,500 people in those facilities—about 6.5 percent of the state's nursing home population—have died of COVID-19.... Cuomo has declined to share which nursing homes were affected. The directive was not reversed until May 10.

"Earlier in March, the governor adopted a blasé attitude about the virus. 'This isn't our first rodeo,' he said at a March 2 press conference, after the state's first known case was announced. 'We should relax.' The governor assured everyone that he was implementing a robust contact tracing program that would track down everyone on the patient's flight from Iran. That never happened.

"Once the outbreaks became more widespread, hospitals across the country began depending on their state governments for oxygen supplies.... An over-reliance on Cuomo proved to be a fatal mistake. According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, many ventilators sent from the state and city, as well as some from the federal government, were old and faulty, and many patients died on them. A spokeswoman for NYC Health + Hospitals told the Journal that many such machines "were not 'ready to go' when they came" and often required additional maintenance. Several health care workers claim that patients assigned those ventilators often worsened with collapsed lungs or similar complications as the machines were not able to provide proper support.

"What's more, Cuomo's near-exclusive focus on ventilators neglected to address other hospital needs, such as the demand for supplemental oxygen and oxygen monitors.... The lack of vital-signs equipment proved detrimental as well. Health care workers detailed stories of patients pulling off their oxygen masks while alone. Without monitors, they died.

"Meanwhile, Cuomo got drawn into a public power struggle with de Blasio. The mayor announced a city-wide shelter-in-place on March 17; Cuomo squashed that on March 18; then Cuomo issued his own stay-at-home order on March 20. Something similar happened when de Blasio announced that the city's schools would remain shuttered through the academic year: Cuomo declared that only he had that authority.... And that back-and-forth may have had consequences beyond prompting confusion. The Journal reports that patients in New York City were often transferred between hospitals without the relevant medical and treatment information, even when those patients were not in stable condition. The city blames the state and the state blames the city.

"But mixed messaging defined Cuomo's initial response to COVID-19, which teetered between cavalier and dismissive. Though he's said he wishes he 'blew the bugle' sooner, he has spent considerably more time blaming the press, the experts, and the president.

"New York's crisis moment has passed for now, with the curve flattened and daily deaths bottoming out.... But if the government's response hadn't been so incompetent, that landmark may have come a lot earlier."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/07/17/andrew-cuomo-coronavirus-response-new-york-failure/

First life-saving drug for COVID-19 discovered

Coronavirus: Dexamethasone proves first life-saving drug | BBC News - Michelle Roberts, Health Editor:

June 16, 2020 - "The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say. The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus. It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.

"Had the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, up to 5,000 lives could have been saved, researchers say. And it could be of huge benefit in poorer countries with high numbers of Covid-19 patients. The UK government has 200,000 courses of the drug in its stockpile and says the NHS will make dexamethasone available to patients.

"About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital. Of those who are admitted, most also recover but some may need oxygen or mechanical ventilation. And these are the high-risk patients dexamethasone appears to help.... [I]t appears to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus. This over-reaction, a cytokine storm, can be deadly.

"In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, about 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who were not. For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%....  The treatment is up to 10 days of dexamethasone and ... essentially it costs £35 to save a life."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53061281

Private sector tackling coronavirus emergency

The Private Sector's Heartening Response to COVID-19 | Reason - Veronique de Rugy:

March 26, 2020 - "It's easy to feel depressed and scared these days. News about the impact and death toll of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, is constant. Government responses have been chaotic, ranging from near-indifference to suddenly shutting down the economy, with politicians offering to pay for everything. Yet we shouldn't lose sight of the exceptional vitality that the private sector is demonstrating during this mess. It will make a difference....

"After what can only be described as a multilevel government failure that resulted in the United States having practically no coronavirus tests available for weeks after the onset of the pandemic, the private sector ramped up its production so much that we're now testing 65,000 people every day. This number is bound to grow..... Singapore's Veredus Laboratories, for example, said it will soon release "Lab-on-Chip" kits to test patients for three kinds of coronavirus within two hours. Four American startups had also launched at-home tests for COVID-19, until the Food and Drug Administration unwisely demanded they stop....

"[O]nly a few weeks after the beginning of this outbreak in the United States, many pharmaceutical firms worked at lightning speed to develop a vaccine. Last week, the first doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine were administered to a group of volunteers....

"Companies nationwide are shifting resources to produce more masks. The firm 3M, for instance, announced that it 'ramped up to maximum production levels of N95 respirators and doubled our global output to a rate of more than 1.1 billion per year'.... A group of American apparel and textile companies like Fruit of the Loom and Hanesbrands came together almost overnight to create a medical face mask supply chain....

"Researchers trying to understand where best to send supplies or how to mitigate outbreaks are now being helped by Facebook's disease prevention maps that display population density, demographics, and travel patterns. As George Mason University's Tyler Cowen also explains for Bloomberg, 'Skype and Zoom sessions will replace many a class, and the textbook companies are stepping forward with electronic portals that present classroom materials, interactive exercises and grade student answers'....

"In Canada, an anesthetist managed to turn one life-saving ventilator into nine. In Italy, a company used its 3-D printer to manufacture much-needed ventilator valves to be used in that country's overwhelmed hospitals. These entrepreneurs then ... modified 'a snorkeling mask already on the market to create a ventilation-assisted mask for hospitals in need of additional equipment, which was successful when the hospital tested it on a patient in need.' And where I live in Virginia, a couple has been 3D-printing shields to protect N95 masks. The Washingtonian reports, 'For each request received, the Filkos are covering shipping costs and sending four free masks to doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers'....

"Burger King is giving out two free kids' meals to everyone who orders food through their app. U-Haul is providing one month of free storage for students displaced from their universities by the virus."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/03/26/the-private-sectors-heartening-response-to-covid-19/