• Hanover
    12.8k
    You must have missed that. To answer this:Benkei

    You have missed this:
    There was a sentence in the article that stated that greater access to hospitalization was another reason for their low death rate, but there were no supporting facts for that. That statement is common sense, but it's contradicted by the article I cited where they showed those receiving hospitalization in New York had a very low rate of survival.Hanover
  • Benkei
    7.7k
    I didn't miss it because it's not what I referred to. It's not greater acces but earlier access and your article doesn't prove the opposite at all because it doesn't go into when people are admitted into the hospital and the severity of their symptoms at the time.
  • frank
    15.7k
    it's contradicted by the article I cited where they showed those receiving hospitalization in New York had a very low rate of survival.Hanover

    Receiving hospitalization or mechanical ventilation?
  • Michael
    15.4k
    That statement is common sense, but it's contradicted by the article I cited where they showed those receiving hospitalization in New York had a very low rate of survival.Hanover

    Your article says:

    Overall, about 20% of Covid-19 patients treated at Northwell Health died, and 88% of those placed on ventilators died
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    It's not greater acces but earlier access and your article doesn't prove the opposite at all because it doesn't go into when people are admitted into the hospital and the severity of their symptoms at the time.Benkei

    What they say is:
    “When I have an early diagnosis and can treat patients early — for example put them on a ventilator before they deteriorate — the chance of survival is much higher,” Professor Kräusslich said.

    First of all, this isn't science. This is a clinician giving his general assessment based upon what it feels like on the ground. Second, it's entirely possible he's treating patients who were never going to deteriorate anyway, so he's providing unneeded treatment. What standard does he have to show that a particular patient was one of the rare ones who was going to exhibit serious symptoms and so he therefore ventilated prior to their being critical? Has the protocol of random testing in order to obtain early diagnosis and then immediate hospitalization with ventilation been tested against another protocol?
    And has any of this analysis been tested against a better cross-section of people other than the German population so that we can screen for populations that happen not to be in their 40s and in generally good health?

    This outcry for ventilators is as absurd as the outcry for choloroquine, but for some reason we accept that ventilators are appropriate treatment because it's just the norm, and then we pass all sorts of policy to assure there are plenty of ventilators for everyone.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Receiving hospitalization or mechanical ventilation?frank

    Either. What scientifically valid study shows that ventilation or hospitalization is an effective treatment for covid 19? If you're going to treat an illness in any way, by ventilation, by offering oxygen, giving an IV, or petting them on the head, you're going to have to show statistically that those things make any sort of difference.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Overall, about 20% of Covid-19 patients treated at Northwell Health died, and 88% of those placed on ventilators died

    Right, and this can mean all sorts of things, including ventilators do nothing, ventilators kill, or that ventilators increase your chance of survival by some negligible amount. It's certainly not sufficient scientific evidence that ventilation is a statistically likely way to improve one's chances to survive.
  • frank
    15.7k
    ventilation, by offering oxygen, giving an IV, or petting them on the head, you're going to have to show statistically that those things make any sort of difference.Hanover

    I'll pass that along. I don't think they realized that.
  • fdrake
    6.5k


    Are you seriously suggesting that there's no evidence that a machine which demonstrably keeps failing lungs working facilitates recovery of people with respiratory failure?
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    I'll pass that along. I don't think they realized that.frank

    If you're going to appeal to authority, you're going to have to cite to the authority, which are the actual studies. Simply suggesting that they must know where the studies are and they must be relying upon them because they are too sophisticated to have done otherwise isn't a proper appeal to authority. It's just a blind trust in the system.
  • Benkei
    7.7k
    This is a clinician giving his general assessment based upon what it feels like on the ground. Second, it's entirely possible he's treating patients who were never going to deteriorate anyway, so he's providing unneeded treatment. What standard does he have to show that a particular patient was one of the rare ones who was going to exhibit serious symptoms and so he therefore ventilated prior to their being critical? Has the protocol of random testing in order to obtain early diagnosis and then immediate hospitalization with ventilation been tested against another protocol?
    And has any of this analysis been tested against a better cross-section of people other than the German population so that we can screen for populations that happen not to be in their 40s and in generally good health?
    Hanover

    This is based on existing protocol which is science based. Try again.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Are you seriously suggesting that there's no evidence that a machine which demonstrably keeps failing lungs working facilitates recovery of people with respiratory failure?fdrake

    That's what the evidence is in fact showing. Google this "do ventilators help covid patients"
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    This is based on existing protocol which is science based. Try again.Benkei

    Really? Because it's the existing protocol, it must be based upon good science? It's just a tautology? Maybe show me the study you're referencing instead of just repeating that's what everyone happens to be doing.
  • frank
    15.7k
    Medicine isn't research based for the most part. Some of it is. The rest is literally like what's happening now: Americans calling Germans asking what they're doing.

    The ventilator isn't therapeutic, btw, it's a way of keeping a person alive so that some other therapy can work.
  • fdrake
    6.5k
    That's what the evidence is in fact showing. Google this "do ventilators help covid patients"Hanover

    Ok.

    The question: "Do people who are put on ventilators tend to die?" is not...
    the question "Do ventilators preserve the life of those patients and aid recovery?" is not...
    the question: "Did putting someone on a ventilator kill them?"

    A world where there are ventilators has a lot less deaths due to respiratory failure than one which has no ventilators. It's not like ventilators are a covid specific thing, they're for respiratory failure.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Medicine isn't research based for the most part.frank

    If you're going to concede the point that medicine isn't scientifically based, but that it's just based upon anecdotal cases and general feel, then we should all step back from accepting these medical opinions as any sort of gospel and perhaps reconsider our reliance upon them when forming public policy.
  • frank
    15.7k
    and perhaps reconsider our reliance upon them when forming public policy.Hanover

    What's the alternative?
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    A world where there are ventilators has a lot less deaths due to respiratory failure than one which has no ventilators. It's not like ventilators are a covid specific thing, they're for respiratory failure.fdrake

    Well of course. Use respirators where they ought be used, but maybe not for covid. If they don't work for those patients and they possibly hasten their death, then let's not get in such a frenzy to make sure they are plentiful enough for covid patients.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    What's the alternative?frank

    Not relying upon them.
  • fdrake
    6.5k
    Well of course. Use respirators where they ought be used, but maybe not for covid. If they don't work for those patients and they possibly hasten their death, then let's not get in such a frenzy to make sure they are plentiful enough for covid patients.Hanover

    President Hanover issues a decree where patients currently on ventilators stop using them due to inconclusive evidence that they do not help.

    Almost everyone currently on a ventilator dies.

    Huh.
  • frank
    15.7k
    Not relying upon them.Hanover

    Who should we rely on to advise us on public health issues?
  • ArguingWAristotleTiff
    5k
    May I just remind us that we "practice" medicine?
    Science based evidence, controlled trials, double blind studies: what ever word you choose to use doesn't change the fact that it is not medical "answers". Our health care providers are simply the instruments that medicine is "practiced" through.
    I am not going to appeal to the "higher power" or God for authority but I do believe that
    "The power that made the body can heal the body."
    Whether it is the power acquired by education by our Doctors who treat presenting symptoms or the scientists in the lab working to find treatments, cures, vaccines....it still applies.
  • Baden
    16.3k
    @Hanover

    Would we stop using defibrillators if we found out they only worked 20% of the time? If your heart's not beating, without intervention, you die. If you can't breathe, without intervention, you die.

    By the way, the worldwide figure for survival of those on ventilators is closer to 50% than 80%, e.g.: https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1164/ajrccm/140.2_Pt_2.S8

    Ventilators may not be as effective as thought re COVID, depending on the type of patient. What's the solution to that? Ans = More research so better decisions can be made on which COVID patients should be prioristised on ventilators (as per the link above) if there's a shortage thereof, not a broad stop to ventilation. And you have no justification for using this to hammer medical science. If someone can't breathe, doctors aren't going to sit around and watch them die, they're going to do everything they can to get oxygen into their lungs because that is the only hope they have of saving them.
  • ArguingWAristotleTiff
    5k
    Almost everyone currently on a ventilator dies.fdrake

    The treatment protocol is fluid at best but there is emeging correlation between when a COVID 19 patient is vented and the survival rate.
    I am not sure when we will confirm causation but until then we are grasping at any possible way of treating the COVID 19 patients.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Would we stop using defibrillators if we found out they only worked 20% of the time?Baden

    If they killed people, we'd stop using them.

    You're making the Trump argument by the way. Let's try this medication, it seems like it works from what folks have told me, it's been around a long time, and why not, it's safe for most people.

    The reason this matters is because we've shut down the world's economies to be sure we had plenty of beds and ventilators and it might be all those beds and ventilators aren't really making a difference.

    So, to the extent we say "why not give them a try?" the "why not" is because there is a massive price to pay if we're wrong. And maybe we were.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    President Hanover issues a decree where patients currently on ventilators stop using them due to inconclusive evidence that they do not help.fdrake

    President Fdrake issues a decree that we quarantine the world so that the spread of covid will not exceed the number of ventilators based upon no evidence that ventilators increase the survival of covid patients.

    Huh?
  • frank
    15.7k
    COVID-19 patients present with a condition similar to ARDS. There's only one piece of research that backs up the associated ARDS protocol. That research shows improved outcomes vs previous strategies.
  • VagabondSpectre
    1.9k
    If they killed people, we'd stop using them.Hanover

    I'm kinda curious as to why you think ventilators are killing people. Nothing in the article you posted suggests this.

    People with more severe reactions are more likely to receive a ventilator, and they're also more likely to die as a result of the virus.
  • fdrake
    6.5k
    The treatment protocol is fluid at best but there is emeging correlation between when a COVID 19 patient is vented and the survival rate.ArguingWAristotleTiff

    People on ventilators tend to die. Having a high death rate due to respiratory failures while on ventilators is not so surprising. This is fully consistent with them helping people survive; if someone who needs a ventilator to breath did not have a ventilator, they would die.

    If there are indicators that certain COVID patients would be at a higher risk of death from being ventilated, in the case of respiratory failure, that would be a good incentive not to ventilate them.

    Consider what options are being weighed; someone's lungs are not working, they would choke to death with a good chance without the ventilator. The alternative; do not use ventilators on people choking to death due to inconclusive evidence, with no proposed mechanism, which is being given undue weight because people are misinterpreting statistics.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.