This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2020-5-29, and is archived here as a curiosity. Minor changes to formatting may have been made in the transition from Facebook post to web format.
As the US continues to have more and more coronavirus cases, we've now blown past Italy in the number of confirmed cases and are getting close to their numbers of deaths. I've been hearing horrible things about what's happening with the ventilator shortage in Italy, and I've been hearing that medical professionals in the US are talking about what they will do if the ventilator shortage here gets worse.
As someone with some older relatives, I'd like to know as much as I can about the Italian situation in case there's something to learn here. But a lot of the reports of Italians prioritizing younger people for ventilators are written so that it's very hard to parse what's going on.
For example, take the attached story from the Express, in the UK. At the very top of the attached screenshot, it says,
"Italy coronavirus: Italy no longer intubating patients over 60."
That's extremely alarming. But then, on the actual headline itself, it says,
"Italian hospital makes heartbreaking decision not to intubate anyone over the age of 60"
That's still alarming, but now it sounds like it's just one hospital. That's a disaster, but not as large. But then the next line reads,
"HOSPITALS in Italy are no longer intubating patients over the age of 60, with some doctors being forced to make agonising decisions about who lives and who dies in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to shocking eyewitness reports from healthcare professionals."
Hospitals? Two hospitals? Ten hospitals? All the hospitals?
Then inside the article itself, it sounds like there isn't a blanket policy on this:
""They've told us that starting from now we'll have to choose who to intubate - priority will go to the young or those without comorbidities.
"At Niguarda, the other big hospital in Milan, they are not intubating anyone over 60, which is really, really young."
So there it sounds like one hospital has a blanket policy on this, while the rest are perhaps making these decisions case by case taking age and health into account.
Does anybody have a clearer picture on this?
This page is released under the CC0 1.0 license, except for the photo which was taken from _Express._