Nurse in report, calls ventilators, NYC patients 'a horror movie'

FPI / April 29, 2020

A nurse working on the front line of the coronavirus crisis in New York City said the city is "murdering" COVID-19 patients by putting them on ventilators.

"It's a horror movie. Not because of the disease, but the way it is being handled," the nurse said through a nurse practitioner friend who is not working with coronavirus patients, the Daily Mail reported on April 27.

The nurse said coronavirus patients are being placed on ventilators rather than less invasive CPAP or BiPAP machines due to fears about the virus spreading. "The ventilators have high pressure, which then causes barotrauma, it causes trauma to the lungs," the nurse said.

The nurse practitioner said in the video posted to YouTube that relatives of coronavirus patients need to make it clear as soon as a person is taken to the hospital that they do not want them placed on a ventilator.

"The patients don't know any better. They don't have family with them. There is no one there with them to advocate for them. So they are scared, and they give consent."

The nurse practitioner said the best way to survive is to "buck the system. Your loved one is not going to have you in there advocating for them once they go in, you're not allowed in. Do not give consent for intubation if you don't want to be intubated or for your loved one to be intubated… As soon as you give that consent, you might not come out of it."

The nurse practitioner said her friend who is on the frontlines advised that: "People are sick, but they don't have to stay sick. They are killing them, they are not helping them. She used the word murder, that coming from a nurse who went to New York City expecting to help. Patients are left to rot and die — her words. People are being murdered and no one cares."

The nurse also advised that, if there is a specific medication — such as the hydroxychloroquine that President Donald Trump has touted — the best thing to do is lie. "A tip from inside the system — if you want a medication to be given, you've got to report that it's an at-home medication, and that you demand that it be continued."

The nurse's friend would not reveal which hospital the nurse is working in "for the safety of those involved."

More than 12,000 people have reportedly died from the coronavirus in New York City.

New York emergency room doctor Cameron Kyle-Sidell reportedly stepped down this month because he didn't want to follow the hospital's ventilator protocol.

In a YouTube video, Kyle-Sidell said: "I've talked to doctors all around the country and it is becoming increasingly clear that the pressure we're providing may be hurting their lungs. It is highly likely that the high pressures we're using are damaging the lungs of the patients we are putting the breathing tubes in."

"It's not our fault. We didn't know," added Kyle-Sidell, saying that is the way other acute respiratory syndromes have been treated. "We are running the ventilators the wrong way. COVID positive patients need oxygen, they do not need pressure. They will need ventilators, but they must be programmed differently."

Kyle-Siddell told Medscape on April 6 he stepped down from working in the intensive care unit at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn because he didn't want to follow the hospital's ventilator protocol.

Republican Minnesota Sen. Scott Jensen told Fox News's Laura Ingraham that Medicare pays hospitals $13,000 for COVID-19 patients and three times as much if the patients are placed on ventilators.

"How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars," Jensen later posted on his Facebook page.

Free Press International