The stroke virus? Covid causes hundreds of microclots throughout the lungs (and everywhere else). By Joanne Nova.

Stories are now appearing of a few youngish people losing fingers, toes or even getting a leg amputated. And strokes have been seen in some as young as 30.

Coronavirus, it seems, doesn’t just cause blood clotting, it causes the large and small sort, arterial ones, venous ones, and now microclots, and many of them all through the lungs and other tissues.  This might explain the hypoxia, and also the other cases of organ failure. And while strokes in 33 year olds are still very rare (even in Coronavirus patients) the clotting could be the factor that matters most in the lungs, and in mortality.

This also might explain why ventilators are not working too well. Ventilators are useful for “wet lung pnumonia” because they use pressure to push fluid out of the lungs. But if the problem is massive clotting, the ventilators, that everyone worked so hard to get, might be the wrong solution.

It also suggests people in Covid-zones should be on the lookout for stroke type symptoms, and drinking plenty of water and keep moving around. …

If Coronavirus can cause strokes in otherwise healthy 33 year olds, imagine what happens to 80 year olds at home?

Note that even influenza increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and being immobile in an ICU bed is a well known factor promoting blood clots. That’s why patients are given prophylactic doses of heparin right from the start. The difference here is that the clotting is so strong that even higher doses of heparin are not enough to stop it clotting.

Mysterious, amazingly low oxygen levels, a pulse oximeter may give the first warning of coronavirus, by Joanne Nova.

In coronavirus blood oxygen levels can silently drop to unheard of levels. People may be unaware they even have coronavirus as oxygen levels fall to the point, medicos are rewriting the record books. This is a hypoxia crisis — it’s a defining feature of the disease. In the UK, the demand for oxygen at hospitals is so great that the NHS is running out, rationing it, and asking docs to lower their blood oxygen targets.

People are monitoring their “blood oxy sats” at home so they get an early warning that they need more serious medical help. Normal blood oxygen levels are 95-100% saturated. Doctors used to get uppity at levels below 92%, and hospital alarms often go off if children with asthma fall below 90%. At 88% doctors are putting people on continuous oxygen therapy. Levels below 80% are considered dangerous enough to start causing organ damage.

But medical staff are finding conscious covid patients with levels so low they are unheard of — an unbelieveable 50 percent. I read somewhere an ambulance medic found someone with a reading of 35%.

Dr Levitan, an emergency doctor in New York recommended a week ago that a pulse oximeter at home would save lives and prevent patients from ultimately needing the highly invasive, expensive ventilator treatment which was so dangerous and such a drain on hospitals.