. @leighsales asked Intensive care specialist Professor @hugh_montgomery what is going on with your body if you get admitted to an Intensive Care Unit for #coronavirus. He explained (thread):

“In many ways we don’t actually know. This is being presented like bad flu and it really isn't, it's as different from flu as ebola is from an ingrown toe nail, this is a very very different disease..."

"...You might feel like you’ve got flu, achy, breathless and so forth but this is not the same thing. For most people that get infected don’t get many symptoms. If they do they’re quite mild or they feel like they got flu and they get better..."

"Some, however, this is around day 10-12…sometimes later sometimes earlier will get progressively short of oxygen so the oxygen levels in their blood will fall. They have a very profound drive to breathe which seems way beyond that were be driven just by the low oxygen..."

"...and sometimes those patients are aware of that air hunger and breathlessness and sometimes they’re just not. And we see them blue and panting and they’re unaware they’re even unwell at all..."

"...Now some of those just need a little supplemental oxygen and will get better but some will progressively worsen. They’ll get a tight-fitting mask that helps inflate the lungs a little bit and deliver more oxygen..."

"They lay down on their tummies to improve oxygen for other reasons but then they would end up needing to be incubated and air blowing in and out of the lungs. Now normally if this was a viral pneumonitis or viral infection of the lung or a bacterial infection of the lung.."

"the problem is the little air sacks get inflamed and the air sacks getting full of gunk and nasty pussy tissue. And that’s not what’s happening here at all..."

"The low oxygen levels and the very high carbon dioxide levels we’re seeing seems to be due to something wrong with the blood vessels in the lung. So blood essentially is coming into the lung full of carbon dioxide and without much oxygen.."

"...and it’s transiting the lung to the arterial side in exactly the same state that it came in. so a lot of this problem seems to be vascular. And indeed when we measure clotting in the blood it is off the scale abnormal.”

. @leighsales then asked what your chances of survival are once you’re incubated in ICU. He explained there isn’t enough patients through yet to know but in the UK roughly around 50% of patients would die, 50% survive. “Could be worse than that, I doubt it would be...better”