Here’s a last-ditch effort to give air to the claims that something besides COVID-19 killed all those who died from, you know, COVID-19. The post was shared on social media accounts on a website called The Voice of the People, titled “Official announcement: Ventilators have killed almost all of the COVID patients.”. However, this publication of the “Official Report” was not official, not the voice of all the people, and not based on any real science. That’s a lot of uncertainty.
Instead, the publication misrepresented a study published in the 2010 Journal of Clinical Research on April 27, 2023, as if it were a giant knot. What that study failed to say was that “almost all of the COVID-19 patients who died in hospital early in the pandemic were killed by direct ventilation, an alarming new report”said. That study also failed to say: “A new analysis shows that the majority of patients who were forced to connect to a ventilator due to the COVID-19 infection also developed secondary bacterial pneumonia,” the report said. No, the study wasn’t just about whether ventilators killed COVID-19 patients.
Instead, the study focused on VAP. VAP is short for ventilator-associated pneumonia. VAP is defined as a lung infection that develops after a person has been on a ventilator for more than 48 hours. The longer someone is on a ventilator, the more likely they are to develop VAP. This is because, so to speak, there is bacteria in this house. A ventilator tube that goes down a person’s throat can essentially be an escalator to take these bacteria to that person’s lungs. Once in the lungs, these bacteria can cause an infection, which is inflammation of the lungs.
Thus, this study aimed to determine the importance of proper treatment of VAP. In the study, a team at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine followed what happened to 585 patients with severe pneumonia and respiratory failure. When someone is suffering from respiratory failure, a ventilator is usually needed to help the person breathe. This is because breathing is very important, and by definition, respiratory failure means that you can no longer breathe on your own. Otherwise, it would be called shortness of breath or something similar. It’s not like doctors are saying to patients, “You’re breathing fine on your own, but let me put this breathing tube down your throat.”
Oh, by the way, it wasn’t a specific COVID-19 study either. Out of 585 patients, 190 of them were diagnosed with COVID-19. Again, the focus was on VAP. WAP, WAP, WAP, WAP. And how successful and unsuccessful treatment of VAP can relate to the patient’s likelihood of death. A team at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine used the CarpeDiema machine learning method for reading electronic health record data to help answer this question.
They found that developing VAP overall was not associated with a higher likelihood of death. However, when physicians were unable to successfully treat VAP, patients were significantly more likely to die (76.4% vs. 17.6%). This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, because if you had a choice between successfully treating pneumonia or not, you’d probably choose the former.
This study did not assess what would have happened if ventilators had not been available to those with COVID-19 and respiratory failure. It would have been similar to assessing what would have happened if the drowning people had not been rescued by lifeguards. When someone actually has respiratory failure, you don’t have a lot of options because, again, breathing is very important. Of course, respiratory failure is not the only reason why patients may be put on ventilators. For example, the patient may be under anesthesia or sedation or may be close to respiratory failure.
Nevertheless, there is no evidence that ventilators are responsible for all, most, or even a large number of the 1,131,439 deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ventilators have probably saved many lives throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
This appears to be another attempt to claim that the COVID-19 pandemic was not as bad as it was and that the US government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was not as bad as it was. A number of politicians, personalities, and social media accounts may be trying to turn the COVID-19 data into a hub. But it won’t bring those people back, and it won’t replace all the suffering caused by the United States’ mishandling of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).