[BostonCard]

Horrifying. I know one of the 11.9% in NYC who fortunately got back off the mechanical vent and lived to tell about it. Scary to think how rare his outcome was -- and it's almost certainly because he had no co-morbidities and is in his 40s.

Then there is Boris Johnson, although he never went on a ventilator.

Do we have some selection bias here? The class of patients who go on ventilator are already moribund?

Oh, absolutely.  There is no question that compared to someone who never goes on a ventilator, the risk of death of someone who needs a mechanical ventilator is much higher.  But my experience in critical care is that it is something like 5% for hospitalized patients not on a vent and 20% for hospitalized patients on a ventilator.  That's why when I started to hear reports of "high mortality" for mechanically ventilated patients, I thought it would be 50%, not 80+%.

I was on a check-in call with several colleagues from my department this morning.  One was our department head, who is a Spaniard.  He listed the about a half-dozen of his family members who were affected by the virus, including a sister-in-law who perished.  Fortunately everyone else, including his daughter and son-in-law had milder disease and survived.

One of my other colleagues on the call was a Chinese immigrant, but still has family in Wuhan.  She was in tears describing the situation there.  She talked about people dying in their apartments and officials coming in white hazmat suits to pick up and dispose of the body.  Basically reiterated what we've heard reports of, which is that official statistics dramatically understate the number of deaths in the region.

BC

[BostonCard]

Horrifying. I know one of the 11.9% in NYC who fortunately got back off the mechanical vent and lived to tell about it. Scary to think how rare his outcome was -- and it's almost certainly because he had no co-morbidities and is in his 40s.

Then there is Boris Johnson, although he never went on a ventilator.

Do we have some selection bias here? The class of patients who go on ventilator are already moribund?

Oh, absolutely.  There is no question that compared to someone who never goes on a ventilator, the risk of death of someone who needs a mechanical ventilator is much higher.  But my experience in critical care is that it is something like 5% for hospitalized patients not on a vent and 20% for hospitalized patients on a ventilator.  That's why when I started to hear reports of "high mortality" for mechanically ventilated patients, I thought it would be 50%, not 80+%.

I was on a check-in call with several colleagues from my department this morning.  One was our department head, who is a Spaniard.  He listed the about a half-dozen of his family members who were affected by the virus, including a sister-in-law who perished.  Fortunately everyone else, including his daughter and son-in-law had milder disease and survived.

One of my other colleagues on the call was a Chinese immigrant, but still has family in Wuhan.  She was in tears describing the situation there.  She talked about people dying in their apartments and officials coming in white hazmat suits to pick up and dispose of the body.  Basically reiterated what we've heard reports of, which is that official statistics dramatically understate the number of deaths in the region.

BC