Re: Hmm
Show me an instance where intubating a COVID-19 patient in type 1 respiratory failure killed them, rather than the cause of their hypoxia.
If someone in that situation dies because of failed intubation, they were probably
- predictably difficult airways to begin with
- already had underlying airways disease
- already had other immune compromise
- in the hands of an inexperienced operator (tends to happen when the demand for people who need it increases more than 10-fold)
and most importantly
- incipiently or already in respiratory arrest
If there's one lesson critical care specialists took out of managing COVID in the setting of respiratory failure, it was to intubate while there is still enough respiratory reserve to manage the stress of intubation. It gets really hard to do that when every ventilator in the hospital, including the old retired anaesthetic machines from the cupboard out the back, are in use. Hence lockdowns. One of the lives they saved might have been yours. Dead people don't get angry about their "rights" being taken away.