If these patients receive no help, they die anyway. Given the choice between almost certain death or some experimental piece of hardware - give me the experimental hardware.
> I can't imagine any hospital or doctor careless enough to
> connect one of these to a patient, even in this current
> emergency.
I'm sure they will go through accelerated testing.
> The smarter idea is to ramp up existing proven designs,
> not reinvent the wheel and basically do a publicity stunt
> about your engineering talent.
Retooling has an enormous cost too (time and money) - yes the design will be proven but you won't nearly have the tools or expertise to implement them.
I'm not a Tesla fan-boy by a far shot, but I don't think they deserve this hate for what is clearly a good effort on their behalf.