Unrelated, but one thing I've been curious about for a while is: what useful treatments are actually available when you're hospitalized for COVID-19? Is there anything besides intravenous fluids/vitamins and oxygen that is regularly provided? From what I've read, it seems that most people that reach the critical level of needing a ventilator don't recover anyway. Does being hospitalized improve outcomes by a substantial margin? Could people just use oxygen at home?
At that point, you need constant supervision and monitoring from the critical care team. You may be on other forms of life support (IV medications for blood pressure, etc). Your condition could rapidly deteriorate to the point where intubation is called for. It’s not like having a chronic illness where the patient has a home oxygen concentrator.
The various therapeutic treatments (monoclonal antibodies, convalescent plasma, remdesivir, etc.) are helpful, and need to be administered in a hospital setting (IVs, complications, etc.)
