Cashing In On Troubles

Every time of adversity creates an opportunity for making money .....

Guillotines Made Someone Money .....

Monsieur Guillotine was falsely claimed to have cashed in on the French Revolution for example. Actually he didn't invent the device, and was actually a death penalty abolitionist who promoted it as a humane execution method ... but that's another story.

So the news that someone other than the drugs companies and mask makers, has found a way of making money out of the Covid-19 should be no surprise ... but perhaps the manner of that method will be.

The Coffin Bed ... Covers All Eventualities

Colombian inventor and entrepreneur Rodolfo Gómez saw a gap in the market, especially in the second and third worlds, and went for it. He produced the all in one ICU hospital and coffin bed! Yes, you become sick, you enter the Colombian hospital system, you die, they then put the lid on the bed, and your buried. Neat, efficient, hygienic and cost effective.

Room For A Little One Or A Large One ......

He came up with the idea as he reasoned that many people in Columbia, and indeed the world can't afford a coffin, and also that bed cleaning in Covid cases was a problem. So his heavy duty cardboard beds could both double as a hospital bed, and whether by some happenstance you recovered, or died, the bed could be safely disposed of either by burial, or incineration (with you in it, or empty).

Personally I think that this is a genius idea, and shouldn't be restricted to just Covid cases .... why not everyone with infectious diseases or ICU wards?  After all the cardboard is biodegradable, so burial is environmentally friendly. The cardboard can be made from recycled paper and wood etc, so is also sustainably sourced. 

Mr Gómez's company, ABC Displays, usually produces marketing material, but when he "Saw what was happening in Ecuador, that people were taking dead family members out onto the streets... what's happening also is that funeral services are collapsing with the pandemic. So we started to develop a bed that could be converted into a coffin."

The beds, which have metal railings, wheels with brakes and a reusable base, and can also be inclined up and down, can support people weighing up to 330ib (150kg). They can even be disinfected thanks to a lacquer that covers the cardboard, with a shelf life of 6 months. Mr Gomez can market them for between £70 ($85 US) through to £95 ($132 US), from his Bogotá factory, which can produce up to 3,000 beds per month.

Mr Gomez reports that he has already spoken to interested potential buyers in Peru, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and even the United States. One has to applaud his initiative and wish him well in his endeavours ....