April 1: "Bubble Helmets" as alternatives to ventilators

It's been good to see that daily briefings from the COVID-19 task force have begun to show graphs and some real data, including the graph of the Italian curve of "new cases" that I have been showing in the past. This curve shows that new cases have finally started to decrease and are expected to go down to 0 by end of April or mid-May. I will address what that means in a post to follow. Today I want to show another piece of news in the context of "learning from other countries". One way Italians dealt with a severe shortage of ventilators has been with a new "bubble helmet", which is much cheaper, less invasive (no tubes down the trachea) and, according to a University of Chicago study published in the journal JAMA in 2016, it produces BETTER survival outcomes. These cost in the order of hundreds of dollars instead of several thousands. According to TV news a small Texas firm has been funded by Elon Musk to produce these. I have not been able to verify the truthfulness of this TV segment, but the effectiveness of the bubble helmet is well established, and they are much easier to produce in quantities with simpler machinery. It saved lives in Italy. See pic of people piled into an "emergency hall' in Bergamo, north of Milan. Somebody should tell gov Cuomo about these. Is this another "testkit story" where we insist on not trusting what other countries have been doing? If anybody has solid information as to why this option has not been mentioned by "authorities" I'd like to know it. BTW, these were not developed specifically for COVID-19 pulmonary problems, but they have the side benefit of preventing the spread of the virus by keeping it contained within the helmet.


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