Urgent new medical theory on Coronavirus: hold the ventilators, stop blood clots instead

For doctors or nurses reading — there’s a call to share this widely

An information event on this online SUNDAY April 12 8pm US Eastern time. (Open, free to anyone who wants to listen). That’s 10am Monday morning EST Australia.

This is not the flu. Most of the time apparently it’s not ARDS either. Coronavirus it turns out — is a vascular disease as much as lung disease. In fact in 70-80% of ICU patients putting them on a ventilator straight away may make the situation worse.

Currently patients in ICUs have about a 50:50 chance of making it out alive. The odds are terrible. Doctors have been reporting how people can degenerate suddenly into a life threatening crisis situation. Now, perhaps this explains it. This kind of hypothesis is one of the reasons we really want to crush the curve, now, because we are so underprepared and there is so much to learn. If this is right it will save many lives.

This could solve several mysteries at once

This virus causes heart damage, it raises clotting factors. People seem fine, then they relapse.

One recent paper found people with high levels of D-dimer a clotting factor […]