Also, how does this affect the actual death rate numbers in NYC if unnecessary deaths caused by outcomes of ventilator use are factored into the picture? Could change the picture quite drastically.

It's not like we're going around incubating healthy people -- you have to be pretty sick to get put on a ventilator. Even if the treatment turns out to be a net negative, most of these patients didn't have very good odds in the first place, so it's pretty unlikely it would affect the death rates "drastically."

Sources? I would disagree, reports show that by not intubating, outcomes are dramatically improved. [1][2]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/almost-9-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ventil...

I'm taking issue with the use of the word "dramatically" not the claim that it could improve patient outcomes.

Sounds like mincing words. Still you have not provided sources to support your assumptions whatsoever.

What I don't understand about this is - didn't China figure this all out already?

I distinctly remember months ago of a Chinese doctor in China claiming this same thing. I thought it was a bit far fetched at the time but I'm getting incredible deja vu with this new release.

It's not just the Chinese. Doctors have been concerned about the abnormally high death rate for ventilators for months too. I've been seeing comments to the effect of looking for alternatives to ventilators because there were indications that did more harm than good. I guess not every hospital had this idea, but I know the sentiment was around for a while.

You should be very careful about reading ZH. There is so much toxic paranoia on there it can be bad for your mental health.

Dr Ignaz Semmelweis had this ludicrous theory, back in 1846, of “cadaverous particles” causing high deaths in women who had just given birth. Despite evidence that it worked, he spent the rest of his life trying to get people to listen. The doctors of the day were so threatened by the possibility that they were the ones killing their patients that they rejected the practice.

We haven’t culturally evolved much further it seems. ”Wacky” ideas are routinely rejected by mainstream science; eg ulcers being caused by germs rather than stress, and can be cured as such. What societal changes need to come about that this doctor doesn't have to make YouTube videos for a month?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/3756639...

Probably because there are so many ludicrous theories that are just plain wrong, and likely they outnumber the crazy ideas that will turn out to be true. Just look at MMS / injecting bleach debacle going on.

You attribute this to a lack of cultural evolution, but the problem is that wacky ideas that might be right are frequently difficult to discern from outright pseudo-science.

The idea of "cadaverous particles" in fact appears to be at least partly a bit of pseudo-science: There are no such things. Semmelweis had accidentally stumbled onto germs, but he didn't know it, and therefore his reasoning was flawed even if it gave a correct result; If the doctors stopped dissecting corpses, that would have reduced things just as much as the mid-wife ward. If he'd understood why washing hands actually worked, he could have had the mid-wives do so as well and save many more lives.

I also don't think it's correct, at least using the Semmelweis example, to say that "we haven't culturally evolved". Semmelweis's failure to spread what he learned was at least as much victim of his own personality as anything else: "Semmelweis was not very tactful. He publicly berated people who disagreed with him and made some influential enemies".

Side note, my wife spent two years studying in Vienna. As a result my daughter was born at Semmelweis Hospital. I took some time to read about Semmelweis and he seems to have been ahead of his time. Great contributor to medicine.

There’s a saying, “progress is made one funeral at a time”, especially in science but also in other areas; smbc had a good comic about it too a whole back (am in mobile and can’t find it now).

Linus Pauling famously and successfully used all his night to reject the idea of quasicrystals. The Updated concept of crystals was adopted shortly after his death; i can’t say I was able to track the history - there is an enormous amount of whitewashing - but it seems initially everyone rejected quasicrystals, but eventually people started to look at ahechtman’s evidence - and accept it, except not publicly because the luminaries of the field led by Pauling rejected it. And then Pauling’s funeral allowed the science to finally advance.

When I studied computational linguistics, my professors told me that a great deal of promising research on linguistics in the US had been similarly stifled by Noam Chomsky and his adherents, the result being a relative stagnation in "continental" linguistics compared to that seen in Europe.

Yes it is. Frankly my view of the medical professional community is much lower now. MDs are really just glorified infantry on the frontlines. The lack of creativity, which presupposes degrees of original and independent thought, is striking.

There are, rightly or wrongly, strong incentives to not be creative. To do the thing the medical consensus recommends, even if it is incredibly flawed, leaves the doctor personally safe. To try an experimental idea on your own could get you sued for medical malpractice. Which is I suppose to say, that MDs have been given a strong incentive by our system to suppress creativity.

(Personally, I think there’s a good reason for this in normal times. Medical research is hard and personal opinion will never compare to years of research, especially when lives are on the line. In times where years of research aren’t actually an option though...)

Of course we need to factor in malpractice lawsuits, administrative restrictions, tidal paperwork etc. etc. into anything which may have happened to medical professionals' creativity.