> are the ventilators only for the worst of the worst cases? (because there arent enough) so you end giving them to people who probably die anyway.
If a patient can't breathe independently, they are by definition a "worst of the worst case". Regardless of whether they contracted corona or something else.
Putting someone on a ventilator is not a cure. It's a last ditch aid that buys the patient a bit of extra time for their body to pull through. However, that's in no way or shape a guarantee that a patient will actually pull through.
When doctors decide to hook a patient to a ventilator, they already accept that that their patient might not make it.
However, that's not an argument to not deploy ventilators or let patients die.
Ventilators are used to give any patient a maximal chance to pull through. The upshot is that ventilators gives a percentage of patients a second chance.
The moral question then is to what lengths society is willing to go to provide that chance to as many patients who are hit hardest by this virus. Understanding that some patients are less likely to pull through then others. That's where you end up with ethical questions about who gets to live and who doesn't and what criteria medical staff is using to make that decision.
> we know there are long term effects on your organs and lungs from corona.
We know that there is damage to organs and lungs. However, this is a novel virus. It's unclear what the actual impact of that damage will be in a general population over a longer period of time.
> Would giving ventilators to not critical or semi critical people reduce the long term effects and damage?
Putting someone on a ventilator is a Hail Mary and it's a delicate operation. It's literally shoving a tube down a patient's windpipe and hooking up an advanced air compressor. Do it wrong, and the patient dies or is left with debilitating complications for life (i.e. damaged vocal cords, overextending the lungs when pushing air,...).
It's also a traumatizing event: patients who are put on a ventilator are put in an induced coma for an extended amount of time which comes with it's own trade offs and potential complications.
> So, a hospital at, lets say 70 percent might still be netter longterm for infected people than close to the edge. (not to mention heart strokes etc)
It's important to understand that maintaining an ICU in normal times is extremely cost intensive. An ICU unit is, after all, intended for patients who are at the edge between life and death. It's a place where life is generally counted in minutes or hours. And above all, despite the fancy technology and the expertise, it's a place where fate, luck and chance determine in which way the scales tips.
The 'shortage' of ICU beds all over the world isn't just a reflection of how ill-prepared we were for a pandemic, it's above all a testament of the deadliness of this pathogen, of it's ability to ravage a human body.
While increasing the ICU capacity of hospitals is absolutely tantamount to save as many lives as possible, I think humanity also might want to show a due sense of humility to a complex force of nature that we don't really control. For all our technological capabilities, we tend to forget in our daily existence that life is very much fragile and that living to see another year is less self granted then we may have come to assume. For many, that might come as a very stark and uncomfortable truth.