Medical Oxygen Is Key to Covid Fight. It Used to Be Feared.
It somehow faced nearly two centuries of skepticism from the medical community.
Oxygen is one of most straightforward and proactive ways of treating Covid-19 patients.
Photographer: Donato Fasano/Getty Images
The desperate scenes playing out in India may foreshadow a dangerous new phase of the pandemic where people die in droves, not of the disease so much as a lack of proper medical care. The situation could get a lot worse thanks to a sudden shortage of medical oxygen in the country.
Oxygen is one of most straightforward and proactive ways of treating the disease, which causes hypoxia. When patients begin gasping for air, a steady supply of concentrated oxygen does wonders.
It may seem like an obvious treatment in hindsight, yet it took nearly two centuries to overcome strange theories, outright quackery and trench warfare in the medical community and beyond.