Posted on 04/06/2020 3:55:29 PM PDT by Hojczyk
That is the theme of this article in the Spectator by Dr. Matt Strauss, a critical care physician. He begins:
‘More ventilators!’ cried the journalists on Twitter. ‘Yes, more ventilators!’ replied the politicians. ‘Where are the ventilators?’ demanded the journalists, now screaming on television. ‘Yes, even more!’ replied the government, somewhat nonsensically.
That sums up a lot of the current discourse succinctly.
I am a critical care physician, specializing in the use of such machines. I’m flattered by all the attention our tools are receiving. But I fear the current clamor reminds me of nothing so much as the panic buyers of toilet-paper stampeding over each other in early March. When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Western world is written, I do not believe ‘massive ramp-up of ventilator manufacturing,’ will be credited with our deliverance.
Why is that? To begin with, “Ventilators do not cure any disease.” They fill your lungs with air when you can’t do that on your own, and there are various situations where their use is indicated, including, e.g., certain surgeries. Generally, a patient with a severe lung problem is put on a ventilator “on the hope that I can do something to treat their lung problem and liberate them from their ventilator dependence within a few days.” However, unless we assume that chloroquine or something else is accepted as an effective treatment, it is “at least conceivable that putting patients on ventilators for COVID-19 pneumonia could be a bridge to nowhere.”
Further, ventilators themselves are not risk-free:
When we mechanically blow air into your damaged lungs faster and harder than humanly possible, ventilator-induced lung injury may result. Generally, for a person to tolerate the undertaking, we have to sedate them, leading to immobility and severe weakness. While sedated, the person cannot cough or clear their airway effectively, leading to superimposed bacterial pneumonia.
This is an awful lot to survive.
So far, the data are not encouraging:
[I]n the case of COVID-19, the preliminary outcome data is rather dismal. On Monday, the New England Journal of Medicine published a case series of very ill COVID-19 patients in Seattle with data up to March 23: of the 20 patients who went on a ventilator, only four had so far escaped the hospital alive. Nine had died. Three remained in suspended animation, going on three or four weeks of ventilation. Four escaped the ventilator but remained in hospital.
Dr. Strauss notes that in New York, doctors are under pressure from administrators to put patients on ventilators “earlier than would otherwise be recommended,” in part to reduce the risk of infection to hospital staff. He concludes:
To put it simply, we do not know how many lives ventilators could or will save. It seems that at least two-thirds of attempts to stave off death with their use will fail in the short term. Of the remaining third, we do not know how many will be successful in the medium or long term. This doesn’t quite seem like a convincing rationale to shut down the economy, redirect previous manufacturing output towards ventilators and suspend civil liberties to give us more time for the attempt. And those bemoaning the government’s failure to demand more and more ventilators should pause for a moment and ask themselves whether that is really the right solution.
To the extent that shutting down our economy is done for the sake of “flattening the curve,” and a prime rationale for flattening the curve is to allow more ventilators to be deployed, we may be pursuing a futile, but incomprehensibly expensive, strategy.
Nice article.
Nothing is a panacea.
His analogy to toilet paper and press hysteria is a good one.
“But I want a ventilator now, daddy, I want it now!”...”Yes, Verunka, coming right up”
From what I’ve read if get bad enough for a ventilator you better hope you had your things in order for your family’s sake.
A ventilator with every Ford 150 purchase!
COVID-19 Had Us All Fooled, But Now We Might Have Finally Found Its Secret!!
Great article!
1) if you go on a vent your chances short term are not good
2) if you survive, your longer term outlook is not good
Of course there are exceptions to these, but big picture the vent crisis is more of a distraction.
Trump Tonic
Long needed article.
My mother was on one for weeks due to pneumonia (she did recover). You are correct though, you are in a real bad way if you ever have to go on one.
Excellent article
Ventilators are an heroic effort to try to drag back an individual who has been allowed to skirt too closely to the edge. A judicious application of the hydroxychloroquine-zinc-azithromycin protocol, administered at the first diagnosis of COVID-19 Wuhan virus, or even as a prophylactic for those who have been in contact with known diagnosed coronavirus patients, would do MUCH to reduce the need for ventilators.
Authorize the widespread use of HCQ & Z-pack and we won’t NEED the ventilators!
Here we go. Now they’re going to start claiming ventilators are hurting people, just to justify denying them to people.
Nothing puts bad news into perspective better than worse news.
There's no shortage from all the realistic assessments I've read. The NYC induced panic has subsided. I'm beginning to think the whole ventilator thing is a distraction to cover up something else.
Killing or suppressing the virus with drugs such as hydroxychloroquine seems to be a more sensible strategy.
From what I have read the ventilators are a last resort.
We have something like 9,000 corona virus patients listed as critical/severe as of today. How many of these folks are being kept alive by a ventilator with no hope of full recovery?
“”””I’m beginning to think the whole ventilator thing is a distraction to cover up something else.””””
Since it appears Big Pharma has moved so much of their manufacturing overseas, maybe the big hurt is that hydroxychloroquine is really not available.
Interesting opinion by the doctor.
Didn’t Trump say today they got 150m doses already?
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