A New York City critical care doctor is raising doubts about the treatment prescribed for COVID-19 patients.
In a YouTube video posted March 31, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell questioned whether the virus was actually causing Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
“This is the disease that every hospital is preparing to treat,” he said. “And this is the disease for which in the next two to six weeks, 100,000 Americans might be put on a ventilator.”
But he said the things he is seeing just don’t add up.
“The patients I’m seeing in front of me, the lungs I’m trying to improve have led me to believe COVID-19 is not this disease,” he said.
“In short, I believe we are treating the wrong disease.
“I feel compelled to get this information out. COVID-19 lung disease, as far as I can see, is not a pneumonia and should not be treated as one. Rather, it appears that it is some kind of viral-induced disease, most resembling high altitude sickness.
“It’s as if tens of thousands of my fellow New Yorkers are on a plane at 30,000 feet and cabin pressure is slowly being let out. These patients are slowly being starved of oxygen.”
Kyle-Sidell conceded he does not know the final answer to treating the disease, “but I’m quite sure a ventilator is not it.”
“That’s not to say we don’t need ventilators,” he said. “We absolutely need them. They’re the only way at this time we are able to give a little more oxygen to patients who need it.”
