re: This respiratory therapist treats coronavirus in New Orleans.

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You need credentials to understand most ICU hospitals operate at 80-90% capacity regularly

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Incorrect. Nationwide ICU capacity is 68% on average.

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bullshite. Can anyone confirm his credentials and the info? Cause I see a shite ton of people and we haven't seen any of this. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is the same shite we've been treating all flu season and maybe last year. Same symptom

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My wife’s daughter is a RN in NOLA and is not seeing it. I also think this stuff has been here a while. Last June I had non-productive cough, and slight fever, then it started to be difficult to breathe, and couldn’t stop coughing. Went to the ER, had higher fever, very rapid pulse, elevated white count, clear chest X-ray, but ERvdoc ordered chest CT. Radiologist saw something odd in lower lobe of one lung, but I don’t remember what he called it. The ER doc said we are just going to assume it is phenumonia, and treat it as such. Kept me for 24 hours and two courses of IV antibiotics, white count went down, fever subsided. Took about two weeks to return to normal. Couple of other people I know had the same stuff in early August, Cv19, who knows!

As a Respiratory Therapist I'm calling this entire "article" crap. Seems to be written by a 3 year old.

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adjusting oxygen tubes that run through the nose

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What is this crap?

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“There is a very real possibility that we might run out of ICU beds and at that point I don’t know what happens if patients get sick and need to be intubated and put on a ventilator.

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Ummm...You put them on an ambulance and send them to another city. We get transfers from New Orleans all the time.

FFS! How does this crap get published as legitimate?

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You need credentials to understand most ICU hospitals operate at 80-90% capacity regularly, without this virus being thrust upon them?

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You are going to need a link to prove to this almost 30 year hospital worker that that stat is true.

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This is how you know he's not an actual respiratory therapist. Oft times in severe flu seasons you double vent people, before you refuse a patient. Hell, its even possible to 4 vent, in a pandemic situation. This idiot is so unskilled that he's suggesting he will chose someone to die, when he's not even out of viable options?

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CONCLUSIONS: Using a single ventilator to support 4 patients is an attractive concept; however, the VT cannot be controlled for each subject and VT disparity is proportional to the variability in compliance. Along with other practical limitations, these findings cannot support the use of this concept for mass-casualty respiratory failure.

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You forgot to read the conclusion to the research... So who’s the idiot..?

I’ve been a Respiratory Therapist for 30 years, have never seen that done and never will..
Some other goofball was on here touting the same bs, and got slammed for it... So please stop with this nonsense.

Getting back to the article from the OP.

That article is sensationalized but some of it is true. The younger pt’s we have that are really sick on vents definitely have co-morbidities, not the healthiest patients.

Yes we are full to the gills, we have 2 adult ICUs, we’re using the smaller ICU as the “virus” unit. At one point, every bed contained a pt on a vent, which I’ve never seen in my experience, we even had 5 vents running in the ER waiting for rooms to open, as the overflow. So ER beds are being used up as well..

Yes, it has been very stressful, that’s why I’m up at this time writing this shite. Woke up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep..

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Using a single ventilator to support 4 patients is an attractive concept; however, the VT cannot be controlled for each subject and VT disparity is proportional to the variability in compliance.

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A real respiratory therapist knows this without needing a study.

ETA: The same holds true for a single ventilator and 2 patients.

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Is that our threat...that dozens dies over months?

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He was just mentioning the prospect of dozens dying due to not having enough needed equipment, not the total number of people dying.

In the past day, there were 46 new deaths in the United States. 49 the day before that. 57 the day before that. It's a very small sample size, but that's a slight daily decline, with the 57 deaths on March 19th being the peak day thus far in the U.S. Hopefully it continues to decline.....

I don't think it's unreasonable to really try to understand the real correlation to what "could" happen.

The CDC estimates that 38 million in the US have had "the flu" this year, so far. Of those, 23,000 have died from it (although usually it's from the pneumonia that sets it).

The chance of dying from the flu, then, is 1 in 1652. With the Chinese Virus, in the US, at this moment, it's 1 in 80.

If the Chinese Virus spread through the population like the flu does, and 38 million became infected, that's 475,000 deaths.

The problem beyond that, is that the Chinese Virus passes more easily from person-to-person. It's estimated that the flu is passed to three people by anyone who gets it, but to ten people by the Chinese Virus.

Using the math above, that means if it spread unchecked, as the common flu does, that 38 million could be 127 million infected and 1,253,333 deaths. Just in the US.

Except, the health care system would be overloaded, and more than 1 in 80 would die. It would be a much higher incidence. It could double or triple. Production would grind to a halt, and basic necessities may become scarce.

This is the fear. That's why everything is shut down. And at the loss of our economy. Lots of hard luck ahead if this isn't controlled soon.

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FFS! How does this crap get published as legitimate?

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It’s basically a blog post from some website. An attempt to self extubate is pretty common for unsedated patients. People don’t like plastic tubes running to the back of their mouth, down their throat, and into their trachea. Who would have thought.