Doctors and medical personnel treating covid-19 victims face a heartbreaking situation in intensive care when faced with putting a patient on a ventilator.

And it’s not the heartbreaking decision of choosing “who will live and who will die” as so many news articles are talking about now. It’s the heartbreaking knowledge that most of their patients are likely to die anyway, because ventilators only allow Covid-19 victims to survive at best 40% of the time, typically only about 30% of the time, and at little as single digits in some cases. In a UK study two-thirds of patients died.

So, if you go on a ventilator you’re probably going to die anyway.

And if they have post recovery training and experience, as most anesthesiologists do, they’re going to be faced with the heartbreaking knowledge that nearly all of their patients will suffer cognitive damage, with a good percentage of it being severe.

So, if you go on a ventilator and survive, you’re probably going to have brain damage.

I’ve been aware of this from the moment the word ventilator was used in conjunction with covid-19. I try to avoid sharing any information here that I can’t provide extensive documentation on, so I’ve been scouring the medical news to try to see what the implications were specifically for Covid-19 patients. There is plenty in the documentation below.

In my job as an audio-visual tech for conferences, I’ve sat in more medical meetings over the last few years than most doctors do. I’ve seen procedures video-projected and performed live that made some of my fellow technicians turn white and have to leave the room. I’m not particularly queasy, but one left me with lasting impressions that I have not been able to shake for years.

It was an anesthesiologist meeting, and it dealt with intubation and ventilators for a good part of it. That’s when I learned that, at best intubation is a difficult procedure, and at worst it’s brutal. Sometimes the procedure by itself results in death by suffocation, albeit rarely.

Short-term recovery from ventilation is difficult, but there are long-term implications that last till the end of life, such as a significant increase in dementia, a decrease in mobility, and other well-documented medical conditions.

The negative effects of anesthesia after the age of 50 on mental capacity and cognitive ability are so well-documented that no one should opt for any elective surgery that requires general anesthesia and/or intubation. The negative effects increase as age increases.

So in the case of infection by covid-19 resulting in hospitalization, I have created a living will with this specific instruction:

“ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS I direct that no intubation be done for the purpose of ventilation in case of conditions resulting from infection by Covid-19. I understand that I may change the above-listed directives at any time by revoking this declaration and writing a new one.”

If your hope is in medical science, or governments, or anything other than Jesus Christ, your hope is futile.

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven— A time to give birth and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together; A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate; A time for war and a time for peace.” –Ecclesiastes

If you are a Christian you have the knowledge that death has already been defeated.

“He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.’” –Isaiah

And if you’re not a Christian, I guess you have to hope that your ventilator works.