You’re looking at
a virtual reality image
of a coronavirus patient
at George Washington Hospital
in Washington, D.C.
The patient is a generally
healthy 59-year-old man
with high blood pressure.
Just days before this
image was created,
he was asymptomatic.
But now, those green areas
show where the infection has
damaged tissue in the lungs.
For many, Covid-19
will be mild,
but for others it’s deadly.
This video is about
the latter path:
How the virus kills.
We’ll start in China:
191 confirmed
Covid-19 patients
were in a hospital in Wuhan —
54 died.
Of those 54, 50 had a
condition known as ARDS,
Acute Respiratory
Distress Syndrome.
It’s a condition
that stops oxygen
from reaching the organs.
“You have air hunger.”
“It means that they
can’t breathe.”
“There’s a very
strong correlation
between the people who develop
ARDS and the people who die.”
ARDS is not unique
to Covid-19.
“It’s such a long
list of causes:
infection, people
with H.I.V./AIDS.
If you get into a big
motor vehicle accident
and sustain multiple
injuries to multiple organs,
that causes ARDS,
SARS and MERS.
Now, things that you inhale
and that can be toxic
can cause ARDS:
household bleach, you know,
war gases, mustard gas
and phosgene.
To the people who vaped THC
that was contaminated
with vitamin E acetate,
and those patients
were also developing ARDS.”
Here’s what’s actually
happening when you get ARDS.
When we breathe in air,
oxygen goes down our windpipe
and fills the lungs.
Specifically, the small air sacs
at the end of the lungs
are the key to air exchange
in the body.
“So that’s why
nature has created,
or evolution has created,
this very, very —
the barrier is so thin.
It’s just a few
micrometers in size.
So the oxygen has to go
through just a little bit
of collagen, the cell
that lines the alveolus,
into the red blood cell.
Once it gets into
the red blood cell,
then the blood takes it back
into the heart and from there
to the rest of the body.”
And this is the key
to understanding why
Covid-19 is killing people.
“That entire wall
of the air sac
gets damaged by the virus.
Think of it like a
thick layer of paint
on the inside of
the walls of a room
or a thick layer
of mold on the walls
on the inside of the room.
That’s what it looks like.”
As that wall becomes thicker,
oxygen can no longer
pass into the bloodstream,
and your organs
begin to suffocate.
So if you are sick, you
might be asking yourself:
Am I on the mild path
or the serious path?
A good indication is whether
you have severe shortness
of breath and for how long.
Those are indications the
virus has progressed lower
into the lungs.
One small study of
hospitalized patients
in China found that zero to
two days after development
of symptoms, chest scans
were coming back
normal for more than
half of patients.
Keep in mind,
these are patients
that were sick enough
to be in the hospital.
But within three to five days
after symptoms started,
that flipped, and 91 percent
of hospitalized patients
had significant
respiratory issues.
“As you progress beyond
the seven to 10 days stage,
that’s when the ARDS
seems to be developing.
And once it develops,
it develops rapidly fast
compared to ARDS developing
from let’s say another cause.
And these patients
seem to be doing
much worse over a relatively
faster period of time.”
Many people have mild or even
no symptoms with the virus.
But the longer
Covid-19 affects
your lungs, the higher the risk
of serious respiratory issues.
“And the longer
you’re on the ventilator,
the less likelihood you will
come off the ventilator.
That is the blunt truth
of this situation.”
“When I saw this
in our first patient,
and you see the extent
of the damage and
how it affects both lungs and
various parts of the lungs,
and it’s much
more striking even
for somebody who’s
been in practice
for almost 20 years.”
And that’s what happened
to this patient.
“Just about one week after
being at our hospital,
unfortunately he passed away.
Really my goal of trying to
get this out into the public
is so that they understand
the severity of the problem
that we’re seeing, and
why the social distancing
and the flatten the curve,
and every other hashtag that’s
come up in the
past couple weeks,
is just so, so important —
is because this is a
community-wide problem.
It’s a global problem,
and it’s going to take a
community solution.
Right?
Everybody has a role to play.
And if you’re not in the
health care field right now,
your role is to stay home.
All right?
Because again, the virus
doesn’t move on its own.
People move.
People transmit the virus.”
Gov. Cuomo: “And the longer
you’re on the ventilator,
the less likelihood you will
come off the ventilator.”
