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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

IIRC from a study in French hospitals, one in three people being ventilated died. Without ventilation, these people would have died with almost 100% certainty (that what “last resort” means BTW), so without ventilation we would have around 3 times more death. Furthermore, in the 19th century, they had no access to antibiotics, so a significant amount of the deaths has probably be caused by bacterial infection on top of the viral one (like what happened with the Spanish flu).

On the other hand, the world population was way younger at that time, so Covid19 would have caused fewer sever cases back then.

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I am aware of what last resort means. The point is that the total number of patients saved by ventilators is tiny relative to the worldwide death toll. It's great that doctors were able to save those people but it doesn't move the needle when we're looking at population level statistics.

Unfortunately I believe just being on a ventilator makes you very likely to die in the next few years once you're taken off it - but I'm not sure if that's because it damages your lungs or just because you had to be really sick to be put on one.

Depends on the country.

Some countries (eg. norway, there way an article in our local news a few days ago) usually don't put elderly, very ill people on ventilators, if the chances of survival are minimum. Some do.

The problem with different treatments and procedures also cause different statistics and comparing between countries is almost impossible.

In my country (France), as of yesterday, 45 635 people have died in hospital (having access to a ventilator with few exceptions) and 19 780 outside (no ventilator). So in my country, the majority of covid19 victims had access to a ventilator and in France alone, ventilation has saved around 90 000 people (for 65k death). I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case elsewhere in Europe too.

On the 1.8 million dead from Covid19, 500k came from Europe, which means around 750k were saved by ventilators there. It is already not “tiny” and I'm counting Europe only.

What's the median and average age of those that died? How many re-existing conditions did they have?

It may sound super cynical and all, but perhaps we've forgotten that natural conclusion to life is death

That utilitarian view can make sense to some. But even a 55-year-old swimmer, cyclist and marathoner can die of this. It's way more than a pious "it was their time" thing. Let's all get past that one.

>even a 55-year-old swimmer, cyclist and marathoner can die of this

...but on average, they won't. It's way more than a pious "this exceptional case confirms an non-existing rule" thing. Let's get past the fear mongering.

That's a meaningless statement. They do die of it, at alarming rates. That's the whole point. Dismissing it with fatalism is fine for you, go ahead and contract it and take the risk. Just quit with the dismissive "everyone has to go sometime" irresponsible nonsense.

But it's not. 55 year olds are not dropping like flies like you're implying in your previous, false, statement [0][1].

Furthermore I have contracted it and guess what, I'm fine _now_ (sure we could argue about "long term effects" but at the moment that is big unknown). I'm also quite young so that played a part of course.

It's not dismissive to say everyone has to go sometime, it's just the truth.

If you're willing to sacrifice resources to give an extra few years to an already dying or sickly subject that's fair enough but pardon me if I beg to differ and look at the other side for the argument and focus on the repercussions for those that will not be _medically_ affected as much.

[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327 [1] https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatalit...

Ok now that's just making things up. 35,000 55-64 dead in the US alone. Its a problem, and flat denial is not the same as argument. I'm done here.

>ventilation has saved around 90 000 people

Maybe 25’000 assuming two were saved for each one who died on it.

I don't understand what you mean.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25657043

Ok I've seen you other comment one afterwards. See my response there.

How many people die in hospital a non-covid year? That difference is the significant figure here.

The currently recommended protocol is oxygenation, not ventilation (i.e. forcing air down the pipe), which seems to be harmful for acute Covid cases.

> without ventilation we would have around 3 times more death

In that subgroup. A large part (I'd say a majority) of the people who died never used a ventilator.

> In that subgroup

True. But hold on: in my country (France), as of yesterday, 45 635 people have died in hospital (having access to a ventilator with few exceptions) and 19 780 outside (no ventilator). So in my country, the majority of covid19 victims had access to a ventilator. And given that a large part of the deaths took place in western countries, that subgroup is big.

Few exceptions?

« Pourquoi une grande majorité des morts du Covid-19 à l'hôpital ne sont jamais passés par la réanimation ? »

https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/12/11/pourquoi-une-...

Edit: https://42info.fr/les-morts-a-lhopital-qui-ne-sont-pas-passe...

Oh, that sounds really interesting. Thanks. That was not what I understood from the aforementioned study and obviously that changes the figures a lot (by a factor 4). Too bad it's behind a paywall :/

Taking that in account, out of the 45k who died in hospital, 12k died after being admitted in ICU. In the meantime, ICU saved 32k people (73%)[1], which is indeed far lower than my previous estimation, I stand corrected.

[1]: https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/dd67.pdf (page 17) which is the document quoted in your article.

We'd have less than 3x deaths, because not all dead even get ventilated.

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