One doctor has said that corona patients should be treated like altitude sickness patients, not like viral patients (and this Wuhan article implies that.)

All doctors say that ventilator intubation is the equivalent of major surgery, requiring anesthetics for the duration of ventilation and a long recovery period. High air pressure damages lung tissue, so afterwards you won't be walking or talking much for weeks or months.

So when you put those together, the best US approach today so far is to provide supplemental oxygen with face masks or cannula until the patient faints repeatedly (turns blue or purple), then make a decision to intubate. (China learned and published this in Jan. or Feb., but we learned it in Mar. or Apr.)

The only problem there is that mouth-breathing patients aerosolize corona virua and infect staff and other patients, so they should be moved out of the hospital to a quarantine facility or sent home. I don't think we are doing this yet, and it's an important step to stopping lockdown since we'll have thousands of new patients to monitor and help breathe.

The US mistakes made pre-Apr. 1 were early intubation based on traditional oxygen level monitoring (and to prevent aerosolization to protect staff.) That had a 66% - 90% mortality rate and consumed too many ventilators.

> out best chance now is not to cure them, but to help them survive until their immune system fight it off?

There is no plan, cure or pattern except we give them oxygen and see what happens next. We have no diagnostic tools that tell us cause and effect. For example, X-rays can show corona virus lung congestion, but there's no measurement or inference we can draw from any image. All we know is that ventilators are a one-way trip for most patients. It is what it is.