[surgeryres]

Not sure what you mean by over-eager. Patients are only intubated and placed on mechanical ventilation when they will die otherwise. There is a step wise increase in ventilatory support in these cases, starting at a nasal cannula, then increasing to face mask, then a positive pressure (CPAP) mask, and then if they are still hypoxic or hypercarbic - intubation is the next step.

[hammock]

In the early days of Covid, hospitals were seeing pulse ox levels so urgently low (70s and lower) that they put many patients on vents much sooner than they normally would. The protocols were quickly changed once we realized vents harmed Covid patients more than they helped… but not before thousands died on them.

Here is an article from 2020 discussing the problem https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...