Yeah, I asked my wife about that the other day because I read some of the same reports. They are trying many different things but for various reasons the most serious patients still end up on ventilators.

Sounds crazy - even if it was something in the blood, if you are oxygen starved, how can it be worse to flush your lungs with pure oxygen than not?

>> Sounds crazy - even if it was something in the blood, if you are oxygen starved, how can it be worse to flush your lungs with pure oxygen than not?

Absolutely not an expert and being married to a critical care nurse doesn't make me one. From what she has told me and what I have read ventilators are not about oxygen, they are about the mechanical work to move the diaphragm in and out, something the body gets too tired to do at some point after a long battle with respiratory illness. In fact the arguments against ventilators that I have read is specifically that they put pressure on the lungs without actually increasing the absorption of oxygen. But this is one of those things the actual experts are trying to figure out right now.

I have no expertise in this subject area. My layperson understanding is that ventilation is a fairly invasive procedure. There are risks involved, such as infection from improperly sterilized equipment. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can elaborate further.

Or it could just be regular survivor bias, in that anyone who is sick enough to need a ventilator is probably doomed, regardless.

We need comparitive studies