tldr:

"The initial projection, one senior administration official said, was that after three weeks of preparation it could produce an initial run of 20,000 ventilators .... That number then shrank to 7,500 ventilators in the initial run, or maybe 5,000...

"Those issues appeared to come to a head on Wednesday afternoon, when FEMA told the White House that it was premature to make a decision. The $1.5 billion price tag comes to around $18,000 a ventilator. And the overall cost, by comparison, is roughly equal to buying 18 F-35s...."