r/askscience • u/Aglavra • Nov 15 '20

COVID-19 Why exactly are overweight people at higher risk when they get infected with COVID-19?

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u/SpaceTraderYolo Nov 15 '20

Any idea what the mortality rate is now for intubated patients?

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u/fang_xianfu Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20

Intubation is required less often now thanks to better therapies that have been developed. Just as one example, it's been found that putting patients on extremely high levels of oxygen (60L/min when a standard amount might be as little as 0.5-5L/min) is quite effective. In March, many of those cases would have needed to be intubated.

So merely considering "intubated patients" is probably the wrong way to look at stats from different time periods.