About 80% of Covid-19 patients put on ventilators will fully recover, assuming they are not pulled off the ventilator. The amazing thing about Covid-19 is it either kills you, or you completely recover (or so far that is what it appears).
Maybe for people who do not have health insurance. For the rest of us the reason they try to avoid it is because it is terribly uncomfortable. But if it saves your life... Go for it.
No. You are incorrect. I wish you were
right though.
*****
Why Ventilators May Not Be Working as Well for COVID-19 Patients as Doctors Hoped
New York City emergency-medicine physician Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell sparked controversy when, two weeks ago, he posted a YouTube video claiming that ventilators may be harming COVID-19 patients more than they’re helping.
“We are operating under a medical paradigm that is untrue,” Kyle-Sidell warned. “I believe we are treating the wrong disease, and I fear that this misguided treatment will lead to a tremendous amount of harm to a great number of people in a very short time.”
Weeks later, claims from Kyle-Sidell and like-minded doctors continue to spark impassioned debate within the medical community, with some doctors moving away from the use of ventilators and others defending the current standard of care.
What’s clear, though, is COVID-19 patients on ventilators aren’t doing as well as doctors would hope—and health care experts are scrambling to fix it.
Mechanical ventilation always comes with risks: a tube must be placed into a patient’s airway to deliver oxygen to their body when their lungs no longer can.
It’s an invasive form of support, and most doctors view it as a last resort. Under the best of circumstances, up to half of patients sick enough to require this type of ventilation won’t make it.
How is COVID-19 Treated and Tested? Here's What the Experts Say
But for COVID-19, the numbers are even worse. Only a small portion of COVID-19 patients get sick enough to require ventilation—but for the unlucky few who do, data out of China and New York City suggest
upward of 80% do not recover. A U.K. report put the number only slightly lower, at 66%.
Doctors like Kyle-Sidell (who TIME could not reach for comment) argue these numbers are so high because physicians are ventilating patients as though they have a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), when they in fact have a different type of lung damage that may not respond well to mechanical ventilation.
A group of European physicians submitted a letter to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published March 30, detailing COVID-19’s discrepancies from typical ARDS and calling on doctors to avoid jumping to unnecessary mechanical ventilation. Other physicians say mechanical ventilation can help some patients, but doctors are jumping to it too quickly, potentially subjecting patients to unnecessary traumatic treatment when they could use less-invasive respiratory supports like breathing masks and nasal tubes.
https://time.com/5820556/ventilators-covid-19/
*****
Also, a lot less than 80% recover.
"April 5. Ventilators are a last resort.
Watching CNN, they said that the Coronavirus patients that go onto ventilators stay on them for three weeks. Only 30% survive their complications after that."
https://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/2020/04/06/april-5-ventilators-are-a-last-resort/