Is anyone minding the store? Perhaps lack of ventilators lead to the deaths of in Washington.

=== snip

Move Aggressively to Ventilate

Du said that doctors should not hesitate to escalate measures for patients facing respiratory distress, as organ failure can set in quickly after. That means doctors should intervene aggressively with invasive ventilation measures -- inserting a tube into a patient’s throat or cutting the throat open to create an airway -- when low blood oxygen levels can’t be improved by less invasive measures.

Almost half of the patients who require invasive mechanical ventilation end up dying, but most of those who recover are those who were put on invasive ventilation early, said Du.

“Patients need to use invasive ventilation as early as possible, there’s no point of doing it late,” he said.

Respiratory therapists -- doctors that specialize in ventilation and oxygen treatment -- are becoming all the more important in treating patients critically ill with Covid-19 as they are more knowledgeable and can fine-tune ventilators to suit patient conditions.

compounding the shortage right now

JIT philosophies don't work well in medicine. When the fertilizer hits the ventilator, we run out of ventilatiors fast.

the lungs can't do it. Interesting approach.

The treatment for the respiratory distress is "low tidal volume" ventilation, which means that you don't push in a lot of air at a time. Instead, it's more frequent and with smaller volumes. And they're also saying that the O2 level has to be very high, not normal atmospheric partial pressures. More like 90%, if not nearly pure O2.

The disease doesn't just keep the lungs from filling with air. It coats and blocks the alveoli, keeping the lungs from transferring O2 to the bloodstream.

Hypertension may weaken the lung tissue or it may just increase osmotic pressure and lead to more fluid buildup in the lungs. Or maybe there's something else going on.

It took massive weight loss and about a year of torture but I got it down.

I still worry. A hell of a time too be a life long introvert.

Semi fasting also works. Do not eat anything after dinner till noon the next day. Works for me. The nitrates in beet juice dilate your blood vessels within the hr. Also, natto, thins the blood if you can stand to eat it. You can get pills. When I got bitten by a rattler, the toxins thinned my blood big time and I had the lowest blood pressure in my life - for a few months.

I lost 50 pounds maybe more by now. I'm diabetic too and my BP is really good sometimes a little low but I take a dose a lot lower now.

Know I'm in a risky group.
If I catch it will do my best to heal from it, If I don't heal and I die oh well,at least I really did what I could and fought it.

That takes a lot of self-discipline.

with hypertension who is taking it.

previous "good" insurance and my current Medicare, I am still trying out different meds, none of which does a good, or even a fair, job of controlling my BP.

When I started on the effective med, it was just $30/month; now it's over $200. I have tried the generic version, and it has no effect at all on my BP.

I am 69 years old---and so screwed.

Look up you med and see what it says about taking with food. It does make a lot of difference if it says to take with a meal or right after.

in, she did add a diuretic to the meds I am currently on.

and other cheap blood pressure meds super-cheap or even free.

Not everyone can take lisinopril. Some people develop a dry cough and must discontinue it. Thankfully, there are numerous antihypertensives that are effective and inexpensive.

It was so bad for me I had to switch to Losartan.

Side effects seem minimal apart from a lot of peeing. It does work, too.

90 day supply is like $23 but not sure how much of that is my Insurance picking it up.

I'm currently on librarian and some other drugs. There are probably dozens of BP drugs. I hope you find a good one.

Works like a charm.

The virus is most fatal in older people. Older people are more likely than young to have hypertension. As Dr. Bin noted, there is no published research on this correlation, and without experimental controls it is difficult to say whether hypertension is a causal factor or just coincidence.

necessary

I’m 62, and doc put me on Ramipril.

He said he doesn’t consider me to be in high risk group for COVID.

For what it’s worth.

Remember, China has a high rate of smokers - these folks could have had hypertension along with other respiratory conditions, and were heavy smokers.

If you are hypertensive but your BP is controlled by medications, are you still high risk? Or is it simply patients who have untreated hypertension?

If you're hypertensive and your blood pressure is normal because of meds, "hypertensive" doesn't describe your state it puts you in a category.

I'd assume it's the physiological state that's at issue, not the predisposition or state you'd revert to.

I am treated and now normotensive, but it will ALWAYS be on my diagnosis list.

No way of knowing if it's the 'state' of actually having high blood pressure, or if it's really the inherent problems that lead to HBP ... that are detrimental to surviving the disease. I could easily see either being true, honestly. Or both ...

I developed allergies to two BP meds, but some others got it under control.

And they're unloading that ship where I live...Oakland

puts high risk people at greater risk. When you shake the hand of an older person, or move within a meter of that person, or touch a surface they will subsequently touch, you could be causing their exposure, illness, and death. No one knows if another has a high risk profile. Young people should be warned to take precautions to protect others, to look out for everyone because anyone can be at risk. Unfortunately, a huge segment of the population cares only about themselves.

In the USA, the average intake is 3.4 gms. Considered high.

In China it's 10.5 gms.

Pregnancy did me in. Anyway, if I stay away from my cardiologist and just see the nurse practitioners my BP is much better.

if there is a survival difference (from coronavirus infection) between people whose high blood pressure is controlled by drugs (as mine is) and those who are untreated for this condition.

My BP goes up when I am talking (using a long of air). I have to tell nurses I can't talk while they are check my bp. Maybe people with normally moderate or high BP have their BP go really high when their breathing is restricted by the lung problems. Whereas those that have low BP like the young have their BP go up but not to the extreme like the older patients do.

Just a guess.. Not a MD, just a professional patient at times.