I have so much experience with the daily battles my dad is fighting so I'll explain what I know from the experience.
Once you are on a ventilator in the icu, you're already in deep trouble.
My father was able to be taken off the ventilator, but went back on a few days ago because he began to experience respiratory distress. Even with other breathing assist machines at their max settings, his blood o2 saturation levels were still well below 90. The problem was that when he went back on the ventilator, the sedation drops his blood pressure, so they have to use some medicines to boost that. The problem with that is it is like revving your car engine when your tires are slipping--it can get you moving, but it is a lot of stress on the engine, or in this case his heart. Luckily, he has been able to be weaned off the blood pressure medicines as his blood pressure has begun to stabilize and his heart rate has dropped from the 120bpm that he was initially at for 24hrs. He was also put in 'paralysis' which means he is not mildly sedated like the first time, but heavily sedated like when you undergo surgery. This will provide him with the ability to recover while machines do all the work, but the drawback is that it will be even harder for him to come out of it.
Because of his current condition, we have researched Tocilizumab, and after consulting with my grand uncle who has had first hand experience dealing with covid recently, will be discussing it with the pulmonologist tomorrow:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...173-9/fulltext
The pneumonia that is in my dad's lungs is still there as his chest x-ray hasn't changed. X-rays do lag in showing improvements or changes from what other physician associates have told us, but the lack of improvement even with the treatment he has undergone shows how persistent this is. My father's most recent test still indicates he is covid positive.
The inflammatory markers typically attributed to covid have undergone cycles of inflammation and then retreat. The white blood cell count will also increase and respond to the inflammation. Usually when the inflammation gets worse, so does my dad's ability to properly saturate oxygen in his blood.
As far as myself--I am completely symptom free and have normal blood saturation and pulse--all while still in my dad's house in the same places he was living. I have lysol fogged the house a few times so perhaps that has helped as well.