Thanks (I think) for sharing this depressing story.
When I saw "GC Surplus," my first thought was hmm, any relation to GC Strategies? But I see that "GC Surplus" is an 80-years-running Government of Canada entity, so I guess the answer is no.
I dunno, maybe if I set up a company called GCSurplus and claimed to be indigenous (or at least registered the business in an abandoned house on a reserve somewhere) then maybe the government would pay me millions to get rid of their junk! Heck, I could probably find a couple of First Nations people with dump trucks to haul the stuff to the dump, for a suitably marked-up fee, of course.
I was just on the Facebook page of a First Nation north of Prince George (Nak’azdli Whut’en) and I see they have a community clean-up day coming up later this month. The band has engaged a towing company to haul away garbage and old vehicles from peoples' yards, and as an incentive is paying $75 PER VEHICLE that members ALLOW to be towed away. Sweet deal! Many of the derelict vehicles in question wouldn't even hold any value for parts, though possibly for scrap metal. Odds are they're going to a landfill.
I was involved with a project to produce ventilators at a fraction of the cost of the commercial ones.
We came up with a model that did everything that the others did, at a tiny fraction of the price. They could be put together very quickly with basic parts and equipment, with basically zero lag time.
I spoke with a ventilator salesman just coincidentally on a flight a few months ago, and he said that they made fortunes during COVID, not due to demand but due to projected demand.
It was very interesting to see that there was very high ventilator use and very high death rates in NYC. Whereas no other city in the US came even CLOSE to the same rates of ventilator use, or deaths per capita. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but...
At one point we were being told to put people on ventilators ASAP when they arrived not for that patient's benefit but to create a "closed loop" where they were not passing COVID on to others. Essentially we were endangering individual patients for the theoretical benefit of the collective. Only it turned out we were wrong about that benefit as well.
More or less I see our COVID response as a panicked cluster-fuck, which benefited only grifters who sold us masks, face shields, plexiglass dividers, and things like hyper-expensive ventilators.
Nova Scotia had a warehouse of ventilators they purchased during SARS and put in a warehouse. When they went to use them for Covid they were rusted and unusable.
Thanks (I think) for sharing this depressing story.
When I saw "GC Surplus," my first thought was hmm, any relation to GC Strategies? But I see that "GC Surplus" is an 80-years-running Government of Canada entity, so I guess the answer is no.
I dunno, maybe if I set up a company called GCSurplus and claimed to be indigenous (or at least registered the business in an abandoned house on a reserve somewhere) then maybe the government would pay me millions to get rid of their junk! Heck, I could probably find a couple of First Nations people with dump trucks to haul the stuff to the dump, for a suitably marked-up fee, of course.
I was just on the Facebook page of a First Nation north of Prince George (Nak’azdli Whut’en) and I see they have a community clean-up day coming up later this month. The band has engaged a towing company to haul away garbage and old vehicles from peoples' yards, and as an incentive is paying $75 PER VEHICLE that members ALLOW to be towed away. Sweet deal! Many of the derelict vehicles in question wouldn't even hold any value for parts, though possibly for scrap metal. Odds are they're going to a landfill.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/protocase-builds-prototype-ventilator-1.5531898
I was involved with a project to produce ventilators at a fraction of the cost of the commercial ones.
We came up with a model that did everything that the others did, at a tiny fraction of the price. They could be put together very quickly with basic parts and equipment, with basically zero lag time.
I spoke with a ventilator salesman just coincidentally on a flight a few months ago, and he said that they made fortunes during COVID, not due to demand but due to projected demand.
It was very interesting to see that there was very high ventilator use and very high death rates in NYC. Whereas no other city in the US came even CLOSE to the same rates of ventilator use, or deaths per capita. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but...
At one point we were being told to put people on ventilators ASAP when they arrived not for that patient's benefit but to create a "closed loop" where they were not passing COVID on to others. Essentially we were endangering individual patients for the theoretical benefit of the collective. Only it turned out we were wrong about that benefit as well.
More or less I see our COVID response as a panicked cluster-fuck, which benefited only grifters who sold us masks, face shields, plexiglass dividers, and things like hyper-expensive ventilators.
Nova Scotia had a warehouse of ventilators they purchased during SARS and put in a warehouse. When they went to use them for Covid they were rusted and unusable.
Scandalous to store expensive equipment somewhere where it’s going to rust!