Enlarge / Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla, says that his companies could help fill the gap in the event of a ventilator shortage. (credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

As with previous pandemics that attack the lungs, one of the biggest worries about COVID-19 is that we simply won’t have enough ventilators to treat critically ill patients. It’s a valid concern, based on reports from Italy. The US government has confirmed that the nation has a stockpile of more than 10,000 ventilators, but President Trump also recently told Twitter that it should be the states’ responsibility to buy these vital life-saving devices.

Over the past few days, there have been growing calls to mobilize advanced manufacturing industries to meet this need, and on Wednesday night, Elon Musk replied to a fan on twitter that his companies “will make ventilators if there is a shortage.”

We will make ventilators if there is a shortage

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2020

However, the rocket and electric car billionaire also used the social media platform to downplay the seriousness of the situation, despite increasingly scary predictions from public health experts that appear to have woken the US government from its complacency.