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The ventilators were a death sentence. Many of the people who died early on, died not due to COVID, but due to their lungs getting damaged by high pressure vent

The ventilators were a death sentence. Many of the people who died early on, died not due to COVID, but due to their lungs getting damaged by high pressure vents. Some were kept on high pressure for much longer than is normal. There was a lot of bad advice coming from doctors in Europe, and also there was the idea if you had them on a vent, they were on a closed air system and couldn't spread COVID in the hospital. This was disastrous. Doctors do not use them unless necessary today, but it's no doubt this is why many of the early death counts, especially among younger people, was so high in places with high vent use.

hkt 6y ago
Can you cite anything on this? I've heard it claimed before but haven't seen a primary source.
corin_ 6y ago
Could you please share any sources? I know they're not used as much now but haven't seen any evidence that they are specifically to blame for deaths. The majority conclusion I've seen in Europe about why earlier death rates were so high in some places was that the hospitals were overloaded and therefore didn't have enough capacity (staff, equipment, etc) and therefore some died due to there not being enough ventilators. This isn't my field of expertise so I'm very open to finding out that my impression is wrong, but my gut feeling is that your comment is not accurate.
- war1025 6y ago
  I don't have any sources at hand, but the explanation I heard is that ventilators are generally used for people who have healthy lung tissue but are unable to breathe properly. Coronavirus weakens the lung tissue, but the ability to breathe (inhale / exhale) is unaffected. Basically the body was forcing people to have shallow breath to preserve the damaged lung tissue and allow it to recover. The ventilator essentially restored their breathing back to full force, which turned people's lungs into soup basically. Makes sense as an explanation to me, but like I said, I don't have any official sources for that.
  - saberdancer 6y ago
    People are not put on ventilators for no reason. They are put because their oxygen level is so level that they will die if it deteriorates. People ended up on ventilators after they received maximum possible level of supplementary oxygen. This explanation sounds very implausible and simplistic. When a person has extremely low oxygen level and you are giving them maximum oxygen possible, what can you do? Ventilator or ECMO (which is probably even more dangerous).
    - war1025 6y ago
      This [1] seems to be a fairly representative article of the sort of thing I've seen. Not peer reviewed, but it hardly seems like fringe lunacy. [1] https://elemental.medium.com/how-one-covid-19-doctor-became-a-ventilator-whistleblower-a1c2dbdd1b06 https://elemental.medium.com/how-one-covid-19-doctor-became-...
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Can you provide a source that wasn't written by a (checks notes) magician?
        war1025 6y ago
        I don't particularly care about the topic, so no.
    - martinald 6y ago
      Not an expert, but as far as I understand with COVID people were not in major distress breathing even with very poor O sats, which is confusing. The standard was to move people with terrible O2 sats at the start of the outbreak to ventilation immedatley, even if they did not seem to bad. That seems to be replaced with providing high levels of O2/CPAP and only moving people to ventilation when that is not sufficient, even if O2 sats would normally indicate ventilation. This is why vent usage is a lot lower this second time round, even with more patients in hopsital.
adolph 6y ago
Conclusions: The incidence of [ventilator-associated lower respiratory tract infections (VA-LRTI)] is significantly higher in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, as compared to patients with influenza pneumonia, or no viral infection after statistical adjustment, but residual confounding may still play a role in the effect estimates. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33388794/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33388794/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ventilator+covid19&filter=simsearch2.ffrft&sort=date&size=200 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ventilator+covid19&fil...

hkt 6y ago

Can you cite anything on this? I've heard it claimed before but haven't seen a primary source.

corin_ 6y ago

Could you please share any sources? I know they're not used as much now but haven't seen any evidence that they are specifically to blame for deaths. The majority conclusion I've seen in Europe about why earlier death rates were so high in some places was that the hospitals were overloaded and therefore didn't have enough capacity (staff, equipment, etc) and therefore some died due to there not being enough ventilators. This isn't my field of expertise so I'm very open to finding out that my impression is wrong, but my gut feeling is that your comment is not accurate.

war1025 6y ago
I don't have any sources at hand, but the explanation I heard is that ventilators are generally used for people who have healthy lung tissue but are unable to breathe properly. Coronavirus weakens the lung tissue, but the ability to breathe (inhale / exhale) is unaffected. Basically the body was forcing people to have shallow breath to preserve the damaged lung tissue and allow it to recover. The ventilator essentially restored their breathing back to full force, which turned people's lungs into soup basically. Makes sense as an explanation to me, but like I said, I don't have any official sources for that.
- saberdancer 6y ago
  People are not put on ventilators for no reason. They are put because their oxygen level is so level that they will die if it deteriorates. People ended up on ventilators after they received maximum possible level of supplementary oxygen. This explanation sounds very implausible and simplistic. When a person has extremely low oxygen level and you are giving them maximum oxygen possible, what can you do? Ventilator or ECMO (which is probably even more dangerous).
  - war1025 6y ago
    This [1] seems to be a fairly representative article of the sort of thing I've seen. Not peer reviewed, but it hardly seems like fringe lunacy. [1] https://elemental.medium.com/how-one-covid-19-doctor-became-a-ventilator-whistleblower-a1c2dbdd1b06 https://elemental.medium.com/how-one-covid-19-doctor-became-...
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Can you provide a source that wasn't written by a (checks notes) magician?
      - war1025 6y ago
        I don't particularly care about the topic, so no.
  - martinald 6y ago
    Not an expert, but as far as I understand with COVID people were not in major distress breathing even with very poor O sats, which is confusing. The standard was to move people with terrible O2 sats at the start of the outbreak to ventilation immedatley, even if they did not seem to bad. That seems to be replaced with providing high levels of O2/CPAP and only moving people to ventilation when that is not sufficient, even if O2 sats would normally indicate ventilation. This is why vent usage is a lot lower this second time round, even with more patients in hopsital.

adolph 6y ago

Conclusions: The incidence of [ventilator-associated lower respiratory tract infections (VA-LRTI)] is significantly higher in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, as compared to patients with influenza pneumonia, or no viral infection after statistical adjustment, but residual confounding may still play a role in the effect estimates. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33388794/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33388794/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ventilator+covid19&filter=simsearch2.ffrft&sort=date&size=200 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ventilator+covid19&fil...