[DoreenMichele]

I don't know.

But another concern is that ventilators are known to cause lung damage (because of the high pressure involved) and are typically only used for a day or two with most conditions. With this, people are being kept on them for a week or two in many cases.

So it's not unreasonable to assume that unusually long-term use of a protocol known to harm the lungs is actively creating problems for patients.

[pbhjpbhj]

>ventilators are known to cause lung damage (because of the high pressure involved) //

I only know a little from my reading in the last month or so, but ventilators (used with intubated patients) seem very adjustable: you can alter the pressure, the Oxygen percentage, the tidal flow, breathing rate and such. I can see that in order to increase blood Oxygen uptake you might use higher pressures, but surely that's necessary to ensure patients get sufficient oxygen to avoid brain damage or other deleterious effects?

Won't the patients suffer in other ways if the Oxygen delivery is lower pressure?

When multiple patients share a single ventilator I see there are issues of balancing the supply, but I don't think that's what we're considering here.

[DoreenMichele]

Someone linked me to this a few days back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okg7uq_HrhQ

It explains how they pressurize the lungs to try to keep the alveoli open and why that's very problematic, even when it is only short term. It is so problematic, they sedate people on ventilators so they won't pull the tubing out.

It sounds just really gruesome and like a brute force method that can't help but cause serious problems for delicate tissues if you use it for more than a fairly short period of time, which is the norm but is not how it is being used for Coronavirus cases.

Oxygen delivery is a complicated thing and I think taking a mechanical approach when mechanics may not be the actual problem is likely misguided.