evidence: Researchers found that 20 percent of all those hospitalized died — a finding that’s similar to the percentage who perish in normal times among those who are admitted for respiratory distress. [...] A total of 1,151 patients required mechanical ventilators. Of the 320 for whom final outcomes are known (either death or discharge), 88 percent died. That compares with about 80 percent of patients who died on ventilators before the pandemic, according to previous studies — and with the death rate of about 50 percent that some critical-care doctors had optimistically hoped for when the first cases were diagnosed. [...] In a clarification issued on April 24, JAMA said that if the still-hospitalized patients are included, 3.3 percent of the total number who were on ventilators were discharged and 24.5 percent died.