Ventilators: Do they save or kill Covid patients?

American Thinker ^ | 04/14/2020 | Bill Choslovsky

[SeekAndFind]

Doctors are now wondering if ventilators actually accelerate death or kill Covid patients.   And with death rates of 80% or more for those put on ventilators, they surely should wonder.  Anything that results in death 80% of the time should be questioned. 

Remember, our harsh lockdown measures to “flatten the curve” are motivated in large part to help ensure there are sufficient ventilators for when people get sick.  Amazing if those ventilators now prove to be of little therapeutic value. 

 

Covidien Puritan Bennett 840 Ventilator

Likewise, except in a few hotspots, hospital beds and ventilators are not in short supply.  In fact, many hospitals and medical offices are empty and some closing.  In Illinois, despite claims the sky is falling and criticisms of the federal government, less than half the ventilators are deployed.   To be sure, this is likely due, in part, to the harsh (lockdown) measures.

All said: (1) ventilators may be of little therapeutic value, and (2) regardless of their utility, there are few, if any shortages.

A Harvard Law School graduate, William Choslovsky is a lawyer in Chicago. 

[GingisK]

Anyone on a ventilator for any reason is skirting death, regardless of what put them on it.

It is well known that ventilators can cause problems all by themselves with over/under pressure or over/under volume settings. The requirements of those settings tend to change with a patient. The machines are made to sense what the patient is doing with his own breathing and compensate for that.

The reason someone is on one of those machines in the first place is they would be dead without it. People really need to understand that. Prior to the machines, they just let the patient die. Pick you poison.

[GingisK]

They are pretty careful to filter the air or use oxygen from cylinders. It is a lot better air than the rest of the people in the room breathe.

[JimRed]

They are already in critical condition by the time they are put on a ventilator.

[Vaduz]

Ventilators: Isn’t that what Dracula’s do?.

[shelterguy]

My son was on a ventilator twice in the last few years. Both times they said he had very little chance of survival. Without the ventilators he would not have made it since he could barely breath on his own.

[GingisK]

Parental nightmares seem to come in many forms. I surely hope and pray your son can stay away from those things in the future.

I did a lot of reading in the past few weeks, with the goal of being able to make one if needed. It is a complicated machine. I could probably make one, but it would be a tough job. I can handle the software a lot easier than the mechanical aspects. It is pretty easy to damage lungs with such a machine.

Many here think a C-Pap machine will do the same job. They won't.

[FoxInSocks]

In respiratory failure or impending respiratory failure, then.