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> The initial focus on ventilators early in the pandemic was misguided and not based on any reliable evidence. Was there reliable evidence to the contrary duri

• TMWNN 4y ago
  Yes. <https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...> was completely vindicated in retrospect.
• nradov 4y ago
  You're not quite asking the right question. In 2020 there was no reliable evidence to favor early use of invasive mechanical ventilation over other therapies. Some clinicians were quick to put patients on invasive ventilators because they wrongly assumed that non-invasive devices would increase the risk of virus transmission to hospital workers. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2021/non-invasive-ventilation-for-covid-19-patients-isnt-linked-to-heightened-infection-risk https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2021/non-invasive-ventilat... https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30181-8 https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30181-8 As with most other aspects of pandemic management, people made bad assumptions and jumped to incorrect conclusions based on little real evidence. No one is claiming that ventilators don't help. They have been an effective salvage therapy in some cases where less aggressive treatments failed. But at the population level the number of patients who actually survived only because they were put on a ventilator is so small that it didn't have a major impact on survival rates.