Undercover nurse Erin Olszewski, in her  Journeyman Pictures interview,  describes a 37-year-old who came to Elmhurst Hospital complaining of respiratory distress. “Totally healthy guy,” she says. “Oxygen saturation [of] 88 [or] 89.”

A little low. But not uncommon. Especially if one is anxious. “People do that,” says Olszewski. “You and I probably do that but we are not monitoring our oxygen all day long.”

This healthy 37-year-old patient was rushed onto forced oxygen, skipping nasal cannula and non-rebreather masks. “They just skip it and go to the high pressure,” says the nurse. Eventually they end up on ventilators and, almost inevitably, into body bags. Comparably, her previous hospital (in Florida) had zero deaths, she says, because they didn’t overreact to a mildly low oxygen levels.

So what would warrant more invasive interventions? Richard Levitan, an emergency doctor who served in New York, reported in The New York Times: “COVID pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent… they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate-to-severe pneumonia (as seen on chest X-rays).”

Notice how this doctor refers specifically to “COVID pneumonia?” That’s a term  not often cited when counting deaths. Which is strange, because as far as I can find, pneumonia appears to be the only accepted means by which COVID can directly kill its host. 

Zahid Butt, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo explained to Global News: “Once the [corona]virus reaches the lungs, it causes inflammation which results in fluid accumulating in the lung and difficulty breathing. This fluid fills the lung’s air sacs… [then] blood oxygen levels fall below normal, a condition known as pneumonia.”

Pneumonia as the cause of death seems strangely absent from many of the death reports where COVID is cited as the cause. One example is the 86-year-old ”COVID death” in my city who died without any respiratory problems. Next post, I’ll share more about the mysterious absence of pneumonia not only in COVID cases but in the name itself.