Special Report: As virus advances, doctors rethink rush to ventilate - Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ventilators-specia-idUSKCN2251PE

The 48-year-old physician, father of two and aspiring triathlete worried that an invasive ventilator would be harmful. But soon after entering the clinic, Bergmann said, he struggled to breathe even with an oxygen mask, and felt so sick the ventilator seemed inevitable.

Even so, his doctors never put him on a machine that would breathe for him. A week later, he was well enough to go home.

Bergmann’s case illustrates a shift on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, as doctors rethink when and how to use mechanical ventilators to treat severe sufferers of the disease - and in some cases whether to use them at all. While initially doctors packed intensive care units with intubated patients, now many are exploring other options.

...

Reuters interviewed 30 doctors and medical professionals in countries including China, Italy, Spain, Germany and the United States, who have experience of dealing with COVID-19 patients. Nearly all agreed that ventilators are vitally important and have helped save lives. At the same time, many highlighted the risks from using the most invasive types of them - mechanical ventilators - too early or too frequently, or from non-specialists using them without proper training in overwhelmed hospitals.

Medical procedures have evolved in the pandemic as doctors better understand the disease, including the types of drugs used in treatments. The shift around ventilators has potentially far-reaching implications as countries and companies ramp up production of the devices.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/...-elective-surgery-pushed-back-to-save-lives-20200323-p54d06.html

Myca Milligan's life-changing surgery has been put on hold indefinitely as Queensland's hospitals scale back non-emergency operations to make room for an influx of COVID-19 patients.

The 16-month-old girl has had four burst eardrums in the past six weeks and is up most nights screaming in pain.

Mother Jackie Wilson said her daughter was scheduled to have grommets put in at Brisbane's St Andrew's Hospital next week, but was told by her surgeon on Monday she would have to wait.

"As a parent, it’s soul destroying to see your child screaming in agony and not be able to do anything to help them," she said.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/coronavirus-dilemma-ventilators/story?id=70124392

These challenges have prompted some physicians and medical groups to publicly question the value of using ventilators early and often among patients with COVID-19.

So are we using ventilators too much? Right now, the answer is complicated.

Some have argued that less invasive ways of supporting breathing may be just as good, and avoid the undesirable complications that come with using a ventilator.

A study of critically ill patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, found that for those in severe respiratory failure, use of a non-invasive method of ventilation, called "high flow nasal cannula," was effective in preventing doctors from needing to use a ventilator on a majority of these patients. High flow nasal cannula is a method of oxygen delivery where a small plastic prong is fitted into each nostril and blows in oxygen at a high flow rate.

Another method, called "helmet non-invasive ventilation," also seems to help avoid the need for a ventilator. Use of this method was seen during the Italian epidemic, but it is not widely used in the United States.

...

While a ventilator is often the best or only option left when a patient's oxygen gets critically low, there has been shifting consensus about the right time to put a patient on a ventilator. Early on, multiple studies and guidelines lauded early transition to a ventilator as a "best practice" for COVID-19. However, that opinion has been shifting as physicians learn more about the virus and how it affects the lungs.

Now, some believe that delaying ventilator use may actually be preferred, particularly given the inherent risks that come with ventilator use, such as lung damage and infections. A recently published article in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine detailed how some patients with COVID-19 don't seem to benefit from a ventilator, even when their blood oxygen levels are low.

Another recent article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed similar findings among patients with COVID-19 in Italy.

Emergency COVID-19 measures prevented more than 500 million infections, study finds | Berkeley News
https://news.berkeley.edu/...s/?fbclid=IwAR2QrNqkvuFb7jAUJd1261jhVYAflAb97T6jHw5VseWT7Pyu9ilaQH1SRew

“It’s as if the roof was about to fall in, but we caught it before it crushed everyone. It was difficult and exhausting, and we are still holding it up. But by coming together, we did something as a society that nobody could have done alone and which has never been done before.”

https://www.foxnews.com/world/imperial-college-britain-coronavirus-lockdown-buggy-mess-unreliable

Experts have derided the coding from Professor Neil Ferguson, warning that it is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming.”

“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust,” David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco, told the Daily Telegraph.

...

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have further claimed that it is impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data using the model. The team got different results when they used different machines, and even different results from the same machines.

“There appears to be a bug in either the creation or re-use of the network file. If we attempt two completely identical runs, only varying in that the second should use the network file produced by the first, the results are quite different,” the Edinburgh researchers wrote on the Github file.

A fix was provided, but it was the first of many bugs found within the program.

“Models must be capable of passing the basic scientific test of producing the same results given the same initial set of parameters…otherwise, there is simply no way of knowing whether they will be reliable,” said Michael Bonsall, Professor of Mathematical Biology at Oxford University.

Coronavirus: 31 dead, elderly covered in feces at Dorval long-term care facility | Globalnews.ca
https://globalnews.ca/news/6807585/coronavirus-dorval-residence/

The facility, Résidence Herron in Dorval near Montreal’s Trudeau airport, is considered to be a luxury retirement home, with room for about 150 residents. It charges thousands of dollars per month for housing and care for each resident.

...

One nurse who arrived on scene as a volunteer, Loredana Mule, described shocking conditions.

“We went from room to room, and in every room, the stench of urine and feces could have killed a horse,” she told Global News in an interview.

Coronavirus: 'Sacrificing the elderly' - Care homes asked to take COVID-19 patients | UK News | Sky News
https://news.sky.com/...-sacrificing-the-elderly-care-homes-asked-to-take-covid-19-patients-11969661

Sky News has learnt that care homes are being asked to take in hospital patients who have tested positive for coronavirus.

A care home owner in Devon has described the policy as "importing death into care homes" and has accused the government of sacrificing the elderly.

UK care home bosses threaten to quit over return of coronavirus patients | Society | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/...02/uk-care-home-bosses-threaten-quit-over-return-coronavirus-patients

Care home managers have threatened to resign over new government guidelines that state they have to accept residents who have coronavirus.

Care homes could also be asked to take in people currently living in their own homes - without any kind of testing for coronavirus.

How the UK's care homes were abandoned to coronavirus
https://www.newstatesman.com/...coronavirus/2020/04/coronavirus-care-homes-carers-elderly-deaths-PPE

Usually when patients are discharged to care homes, there is an assessment of their needs and where it might be appropriate to place them before they leave hospital. But when coronavirus hit, “they flipped that model round”, says Whitaker.

“There may well have been some people who were pushed out into care homes quickly, supposedly as non-Covid patients – but nobody could say for sure, they weren’t tested – who were virally shedding.

“I definitely know in our area, people with proven coronavirus who were on the recovery track – the frailer people, who had maybe come in from a nursing home in the first place – were being discharged as known positive cases into nursing homes.”

DRZEEF: This would be really painful news and would open up an entirely different chapter, because I can't tell you how many people I spoke to who took peace and solace in the fact that children were not getting infected," Cuomo said. "We thought children could be vehicles of transmission ... but we didn't think children would suffer from it."

Cuomo tim mozna otvira "novou kapitolu", ale na umrti 5 leteho kluka neni naprosto nic noveho ani zvlastniho.

Ono i vic pomuze studie, ktera analyzovala udaje z onkologickych detskych klinik z celeho sveta, a z ni vyplyva, ze i u deti s rakovinou s pozitivnim nalezem covid-19 nemelo zadne z tech deti problem ani zavazny prubeh, coz je trochu zvlastni, kdyz maji snizenou imunitu.

Proste faktem je, ze i uplne zdravy mlady clovek muze zemrit na chripku, i pokud nema zadne zname zdravotni potize. Je to raritni ale stava se. V tehle zprave i chybi informace, co byla vlastne pricina smrti.

No v mediich to neni prvni clanek, ktery se jakoby mirne otre o nejake male dite, o nejaky anekdotalni pripad, a kolikrat pak chybi i podrobnosti, kdyz uz o tom mluvi. Pritom na zaklade takovych jednotlivych pripadu prece nejde vyvodit, ze je potreba se obavat o deti.

Pripomnelo mi to ten clanek onehda o umrti jiste 16 lete holky z Francie. Nemela pry ani zadne zname zdravotni potize, takze to uzavreli, ze covid zabiji i teenagerz. Kdyz jsem k tomu hledal podrobnosti, google to popletl a nasel mi pripady umrti na chripku z let minulych, coz umistuje vec do perspektivy. svet je velky. proc zemre mlady clovek na chripku je zahada, ale zjevne se to deje. vsechny tyhle nemoci jsou zjevne hodne nebezpecne, ale vetsina lidi je zpracuje.

2018
Teenager dies after catching flu virus - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-42651203
An 18-year-old woman has died in hospital after catching the flu virus.
Bethany Walker, from Applecross in Wester Ross, had been suffering from the virus at home before it developed into pneumonia.

Cuomo warns of 'entirely different chapter' as 5-year-old NYC boy dies from COVID-related complications - CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/08/us/cuomo-child-nyc-dies-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

DRZEEF: mno kdyz budes mrdku zhluboka vdechovat, tak zcela jistě ano...

Tak a je i ingnorustánu a poprosil bych i o jeho Banstán...pekny den,)

tady to mas cesky. 28. dubna cesky denni tisk, anglicky asi moc nectes, jinak bys vedel ze mrtve v Italii musela do krematorii rozvazet v nakladacich italska armada

Navic podle ikonky ses nejakej fanda do armady, kterej sem neco vybleje, co bylo rano na novinkach...ses uplne mimo, tady si na vojaky nehrajem...diky