One of the other big issues hitting during this crisis beyond simple availability of ventilation machines is the number of nurses and doctors available to monitor and care for patients when they have to go to the ICU. Ideally the machine would be both cheap and easy to produce and require less qualified monitoring.

If we get way more machines but those machines require a lot of intensive monitoring we could wind up with plenty of machines but not making any progress on the fatality rate.

Harder to infect others if you’re dead.

Unless you plan ahead ;)