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I think stating it as "ventilators are killing people" is wrong. It's an intervention because these people don't have enough oxygen in their blood, the interven

I think stating it as "ventilators are killing people" is wrong. It's an intervention because these people don't have enough oxygen in their blood, the intervention helps them put oxygen in their blood. It's all well and good to look at alternatives as you put it in your last sentence, but the way you put it at the outset sounds like you think ventilation is worse than nothing on the whole, which is probably not true, even if for some patients it is premature and makes things worse.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
That isn't what I said. You misquoted me and I posted my source. To reiterate: Some doctors are concerned the ventilators are actually killing people. They are concerned because the death rate is shockingly high for ventilator usage, much higher than is typical with ventilators. The evidence is mounting that use of ventilators should probably be an absolute last ditch treatment option for people with Coronavirus and that other treatment modalities should be used first. Some of these are as simple as recommending different sleep positions to ease lung distress, something I talked about previously. It's not news at all that some positions are harder on the lungs than others. It's been medical practice for decades to put people on inclined surfaces when they have pneumonia to reduce the amount of lung surface being submerged in fluid. It has a known track record for improving survival and it's non invasive and doesn't require fancy equipment or training, etc etc. Though it lacks the geegaw "ooh, shiny!" appeal of people cooking up open source ventilator projects, so no one is all excited to talk about such simple and readily available interventions that any idiot can do, even from home, even without a formal diagnosis or doctor's prescription. Edit: My source doesn't baldly state, as I did, that doctors are concerned that ventilators are killing people. It more delicately states that ventilators may be harming certain patients and then cites the crazy high death rate as evidence of this possibility. I stand by my more bald framing of the issue. I'm aware it's not PC, but there comes a point past which efforts to be PC do a disservice to the truth.
- Santosh83 7y ago
  It's not PC. It's the typical frightened backlash from those who have invested their lot with reductionist logic and simply cannot face any other approach to problems. You find this quite commonly in the field for which this forum exists, hence the outraged responses to you.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    My understanding of the term "PC" is that we basically try to be as inoffensive as possible in public. Where this encourages people to not use racist, sexist, etc language, it's generally a good thing. To the degree that it encourages people to hem and haw about uncomfortable truths, like "this is killing people," it's often counterproductive. I'm a former military wife. The military is not a culture that tries to politely find ways around talking about death. It's pretty blunt about some things that the civilian world finds uncomfortable.
    - watwut 7y ago
      Nitpick: Lack of PC is not uncomfortable. Quite often it is about telling things the person finds comfortable and that feel good - the ones that imply speaker is superior or that someone was always right about world.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        I feel like there's some sort of disconnect here. I'm aware that politically incorrect remarks are often about privileged people being unconscionably rude and that such remarks are typically not uncomfortable for the speaker. I'm trying to make a distinction between being appropriately concerned with respecting the feelings of other people and situations where it's actively problematic in terms of clear communication to try too hard to be delicate about a topic. There are situations where that actively fosters misunderstanding, having nothing at all to do with the fact that privileged people are frequently oblivious to how hurtful their words are for other demographics. My source delicately frames this problem as "causing harm to some patients." Most people would not frame a dramatically higher death rate as "causing harm to the patient." That framing implies survival. I think it's appropriate in this case to baldly state that we are talking about people dying, not people suffering moderately more. I've explained why.
- zwaps 7y ago
  The speculation is the issue here. You say "evidence is mounting", but I don't see this to be the case. In the article you quotes, the evidence is that "some doctors think" but even then, the article concludes that ventilators probably save lives. No inference can be drawn from data points such as death rates with and without ventilators, since ventilators are not randomly assigned. This is just basic statistical inference and the reason why you don't have ANY official sources or guidelines following your directive. It would still be likely that the people dying with ventilators would die without them, and there is indication that people that survive with ventilation would not have survived otherwise. Consider, for example, the correlation of death rate for countries without enough ventilators and those (such as Germany) with enough ventilators available. The difference is very large. Consider also that Chinese doctors recommend the exact opposite to what you say. A lot of people die from heart or organ failure because of the stress oxygen distress induces. There are a lot of cases where recovery would be possible if it weren't for organ failure. In these cases, ventilation seems to help. In that sense, there is clear evidence that ventilators are useful and, at least on a population level, outweigh the risks. We can not (ethically) run experiments in these situations, so it would be wise to refrain from making questionable analyses based on anecdotal data.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

That isn't what I said. You misquoted me and I posted my source. To reiterate: Some doctors are concerned the ventilators are actually killing people. They are concerned because the death rate is shockingly high for ventilator usage, much higher than is typical with ventilators. The evidence is mounting that use of ventilators should probably be an absolute last ditch treatment option for people with Coronavirus and that other treatment modalities should be used first. Some of these are as simple as recommending different sleep positions to ease lung distress, something I talked about previously. It's not news at all that some positions are harder on the lungs than others. It's been medical practice for decades to put people on inclined surfaces when they have pneumonia to reduce the amount of lung surface being submerged in fluid. It has a known track record for improving survival and it's non invasive and doesn't require fancy equipment or training, etc etc. Though it lacks the geegaw "ooh, shiny!" appeal of people cooking up open source ventilator projects, so no one is all excited to talk about such simple and readily available interventions that any idiot can do, even from home, even without a formal diagnosis or doctor's prescription. Edit: My source doesn't baldly state, as I did, that doctors are concerned that ventilators are killing people. It more delicately states that ventilators may be harming certain patients and then cites the crazy high death rate as evidence of this possibility. I stand by my more bald framing of the issue. I'm aware it's not PC, but there comes a point past which efforts to be PC do a disservice to the truth.

Santosh83 7y ago
It's not PC. It's the typical frightened backlash from those who have invested their lot with reductionist logic and simply cannot face any other approach to problems. You find this quite commonly in the field for which this forum exists, hence the outraged responses to you.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  My understanding of the term "PC" is that we basically try to be as inoffensive as possible in public. Where this encourages people to not use racist, sexist, etc language, it's generally a good thing. To the degree that it encourages people to hem and haw about uncomfortable truths, like "this is killing people," it's often counterproductive. I'm a former military wife. The military is not a culture that tries to politely find ways around talking about death. It's pretty blunt about some things that the civilian world finds uncomfortable.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Nitpick: Lack of PC is not uncomfortable. Quite often it is about telling things the person finds comfortable and that feel good - the ones that imply speaker is superior or that someone was always right about world.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I feel like there's some sort of disconnect here. I'm aware that politically incorrect remarks are often about privileged people being unconscionably rude and that such remarks are typically not uncomfortable for the speaker. I'm trying to make a distinction between being appropriately concerned with respecting the feelings of other people and situations where it's actively problematic in terms of clear communication to try too hard to be delicate about a topic. There are situations where that actively fosters misunderstanding, having nothing at all to do with the fact that privileged people are frequently oblivious to how hurtful their words are for other demographics. My source delicately frames this problem as "causing harm to some patients." Most people would not frame a dramatically higher death rate as "causing harm to the patient." That framing implies survival. I think it's appropriate in this case to baldly state that we are talking about people dying, not people suffering moderately more. I've explained why.
zwaps 7y ago
The speculation is the issue here. You say "evidence is mounting", but I don't see this to be the case. In the article you quotes, the evidence is that "some doctors think" but even then, the article concludes that ventilators probably save lives. No inference can be drawn from data points such as death rates with and without ventilators, since ventilators are not randomly assigned. This is just basic statistical inference and the reason why you don't have ANY official sources or guidelines following your directive. It would still be likely that the people dying with ventilators would die without them, and there is indication that people that survive with ventilation would not have survived otherwise. Consider, for example, the correlation of death rate for countries without enough ventilators and those (such as Germany) with enough ventilators available. The difference is very large. Consider also that Chinese doctors recommend the exact opposite to what you say. A lot of people die from heart or organ failure because of the stress oxygen distress induces. There are a lot of cases where recovery would be possible if it weren't for organ failure. In these cases, ventilation seems to help. In that sense, there is clear evidence that ventilators are useful and, at least on a population level, outweigh the risks. We can not (ethically) run experiments in these situations, so it would be wise to refrain from making questionable analyses based on anecdotal data.