It 8s not 30% of patients that reach the point of lung failure as you stated. It is 30% of all patients. Your source:
According to Gattinoni, about 30% of COVID-19 patients who come to the hospital have more classic symptoms of ARDS.
Gattinoni says doctors need to pay attention to how COVID-19 has affected the lungs and breathing of each patient they’re treating before deciding on treatment.
Patients with more classic ARDS-type COVID-19 often need mechanical ventilation right away, which forces air into the lungs to increase oxygen.
60+% of patients at the hospital in the ICU (where ventilators are used) should not have been put on ventilators there. As the article shows, one hospital lost 60% of its patients needing advanced care by treating everyone as if they had ARDS. The other hospital that stopped giving ventilators to the 70% needing advanced other treatment had zero deaths.
ARDS needs ventilators. That is not what most of the ICU cases benefit from.