“As far as I can see COVID-19 is not a pneumonia and should not be treated as one. Rather, it appears as some kind of viral-induced disease most resembling High Altitude Sickness. It is as if tens of thousands of my fellow New Yorkers are on a plane at 30,000 feet and the cabin pressure is slowly being let out. These patients are slowly being starved of oxygen. I have seen patients dependent on oxygen, take off their oxygen and quickly progress through a state of anxiety and emotional distress, and eventually get blue in their face; and while they look like patients absolutely on the brink of death, they do not look like patients dying of pneumonia. I have never been a mountain climber and I do not know the conditions at base camp below the highest peak in the world, but I suspect that the patients I am seeing in front of me look most like as if a person was dropped off on the top of Mount Everest without time to acclimate.”
-- Cameron Kyle-Sidell, NYC physician
