Governor Cuomo was desperate for ventilators, and the impact team had a lead. An electrical engineer in Silicon Valley, Yaron Oren-Pines, had no experience in healthcare but he had recently posted a tweet claiming he could supply them. New York took the bait and paid $69 million for 1,450 ventilators, which was at least three times the market price. There were no ventilators. The federal government awarded another contract, for $55.5 million, to purchase N95 masks from a tactical training company in Virginia, one of the largest orders for masks by the federal government. Not only did the
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