had a long talk with my friend nick caputo, works in south bronx, emergency and critical care doc, preparing coming, and explained this phenomenon, x-rays looking awful. pulse ox numbers. what he and others around new york, large group of people in emergency medicine began to do this, including ruben strayer in brooklyn, nick caputo, and a bunch of people in queens, realized if they put people on oxygen, nasal cannulsa, c-pap masks and turned them on their stomachs on oxygen pulse ox would go up dramatically. and began to question whether or not we should be intubating as many patients as we had initially. over course of time at bellevue i saw that change. intubation rates went down for the alternative therapies. >> that's fascinating. sanjay you had heard other doctors talk about that. dr. levitan, thanks for coming to new york and helping save the city and for what you do in normal times. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. just want to mention the real heroes are on the front lines in new york city. i came for ten days. but thank you for having me. >> going to have a papaya dog

a friend of mine, nick caputo, and my friend ray and i wrote the first article showing that turning people over on their stomach, giving their oxygen can avoid ventilatorventilators. three out of four with severe no mo -- pneumonia did not require a ventilator in the first four hours. this is dramatic. as this is something we have to deal with over 12 months, 24 months, if we can move treatment to less ventilators, less resources, it will have an enormous impact as to how we go forward as a country. >> all right. knowing there are best practices being shared in the medical community, that in itself obviously is reason for pragmatic optimism. i'm a bit short on time, but i want to thank you both for sharing your expertise with us. up next, from racial slurs to violent attacks, the surge in discrimination about the asian community amid this pandemic. you're watching msnbc. you're watching msnbc. hey allergy muddlers... achoo! ...do your sneezes turn heads? try zyrtec... ...it starts working hard at hour one... and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. zyrtec muddle no more