Another bit of evidence that COVID-19 is more of a cardiovascular disease than a respiratory one.
In the past few days, both
Italian and American doctors observed that, despite very low blood oxygen saturation, lung mechanics (i.e. lung gas volume) remain intact. COVID-19 patients do not really have ARDS; the typical use of a ventilator, at high pressure, is probably iatrogenic. This makes the "early vent" strategy look pretty bad.
(This illustrates how a poorly-understood disease has greater potential to overwhelm than a relatively well-understood one.)