Unnecessary Deaths on YouTube Monday 13 Feb 2023 by Dr John Campbell .
Dr John Campbell has a well respected YouTube channel and feels sure that there were unnecessary deaths during the COVID 19 pandemic (data applies to the UK). He thinks that NICE simply cut & pasted end-of-life-guidelines (for eg terminal cancer) in to guidelines for Covid 19.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is a UK public body which "provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care". Dr Campbell quotes NICE published guidelines on 3rd April 2020 for Covid 19 Rapid response (these have since been replaced). These were obtained from the Waybackmachine (online web archive) which said:
"6. Managing breathlessness
6.5 Consider an opiod and benzodiazepine combination (see tables 4 and 5 ) for patients with COVID-19 who:
- are at the end of life and
- have moderate to severe breathlessness and
- are distressed"
Dr Campbell says that the use of these drugs is classical treatment well tried and tested for terminal care in eg incurable cancer cases. It is completely the right thing to do in most of those circumstances to make a person comfortable as they approach their death. The 2 drugs together depress respiration (stop people breathing).
But Campbell questions how many patients would actually be at the end of life with COVID 19 (unless they had some intractable condition at the same time)? With an infection condition, you can't really tell whether they are at the end of life or not. So there were people that looked ill. But, they had a virus that their immune system could have overcome and they recover. Unfortunately, they could well have been given these medications.
The trouble is that NICE seem to have transposed the treatment for eg incurable cancer in to the COVID situation, even though COVID is an infection from which most people would completely recover. A lot of people were breathless with fluid in their alveoli (tiny air sacks in the lungs) and so breathed rapidly to get enough oxygen in to their body to survive the acute episode. But if those drugs are given which will suppress breathing then death will result. And the NICE advice included the very alarming line that :
"6.5 .... Sedation and opiod use should not be withheld because of fear of causing respiratory depression".
With the guidelines in place there was always a chance of causing respiratory depression . After these NICE guidelines were published on 3 April 2020, the level of prescribing these drugs went up. Here is levomepromazine:
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| openprescribing.net |
Here is the most concerning drug, Midazolam:
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| Coronavirus data |
Campbell comments that it is "quite disturbing that potentially a lot of people that could have survived didn't survive as a result of the medical interventions that they received".
The drugs are normally associated with end-of-life drugs. But with infections you can't tell if it is end of life. The tragedy may be that end of life guidlines were simply cut-n-pasted across to COVID.
With thanks to Dr John Campbell on his Youtube channel.
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Part 2 of unnecessary deaths, Tuesday 14th Feb 2023. Dr John Campbell. In this video he reiterates his concerns about the NICE guidelines for using sedation and opiod drugs in relation to COVID.