vigil617
US Veteran
Forum friends, I have mulled for a couple of days whether to post this. We are all so inundated by coronavirus information, and most of us are downright sick of it, no pun intended. But after much thought, I want to provide the link to this article in hopes that perhaps it will save a life among our Forum members, their families, or their friends.
It is written by an emergency room doctor specializing in breathing-related treatments who volunteered in one of New York's hospitals that was being swamped with patients. He noticed that the pneumonia being caused by the virus has some important and insidious differences from what doctors normally see, namely, that it does not display some of the symptoms usually used to evaluate how sick a person is. As a result of what is called "silent hypoxia," the oxygen level in infected patients' blood can drop dangerously low without their realizing it and without causing usual symptoms such as shortness of breath, gasping for air, and other commonly-seen ways of detecting the condition.
The upshot, from his observation and experience, is that by the time people are sick enough to go to the hospital, they are sometimes too far along for treatments -- even ventilators -- to help them. Many have died within a day or two of being hospitalized.
I am not an alarmist. But there is so much new about this disease, and the stakes are so high, that being aware of things like this is vital. I encourage you to read it, to pass it along to others, and to take whatever precautions you and your doctor think are necessary to keep yourself healthy.
I post this because I care about my friends here. Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home.
Opinion | The Infection That's Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients - The New York Times
It is written by an emergency room doctor specializing in breathing-related treatments who volunteered in one of New York's hospitals that was being swamped with patients. He noticed that the pneumonia being caused by the virus has some important and insidious differences from what doctors normally see, namely, that it does not display some of the symptoms usually used to evaluate how sick a person is. As a result of what is called "silent hypoxia," the oxygen level in infected patients' blood can drop dangerously low without their realizing it and without causing usual symptoms such as shortness of breath, gasping for air, and other commonly-seen ways of detecting the condition.
The upshot, from his observation and experience, is that by the time people are sick enough to go to the hospital, they are sometimes too far along for treatments -- even ventilators -- to help them. Many have died within a day or two of being hospitalized.
I am not an alarmist. But there is so much new about this disease, and the stakes are so high, that being aware of things like this is vital. I encourage you to read it, to pass it along to others, and to take whatever precautions you and your doctor think are necessary to keep yourself healthy.
I post this because I care about my friends here. Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home.
Opinion | The Infection That's Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients - The New York Times
