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But it doesn't have to be covid patients. There will still be people who need a ventilator but aren't part of the epidemic, freeing up ventilators for covid patients.

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As an example, my aunt just recently had a heart attack about two weeks before this covid stuff and had to be put on a ventilator. While in the ICU she developed an infection from a rare fungal disease that had been in her lungs for a while but suddenly had the opportunity to grow and cause respiratory distress. A lot of people have strange microbes in them that are being held at bay by the immune system. When all of a sudden you expose an already immuno-distressed person to someone else's novel microbes, you risk opportunistic infections, even in non-covid patients.

I'm sure they can figure out how to re-use ventilators, but there probably needs to be some kind of assurance so that things can't cross.

Based on data from China, 97% of the people who need ventilators will die anyway:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The Ventilator just keeps them alive for a few days, but there are other bodily systems failing and causing death.

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