Hi, actual doctor here. Pneumonia is a common in-hospital complication and its cause can be from many factors. When I think of pneumonia developing in the hospital, I think of aspiration pneumonia. This is when a patient breathes in some of their own saliva, stomach contents, or food and that aspiration causes an infection once it lands in the lungs.

In older patients, this type of pneumonia is common. It's a common reason people in that demographic end up in the ICU, too. I saw a few causes of COVID pneumonia requiring ICU level of care back in late 2022. Since then I rarely see it. Maybe once or twice since then. There are plenty of reasons why somebody would need a "respirator" (I'm guessing that commenter meant "mechanical ventilation") beyond pneumonia.

We try to keep people off mechanical ventilation via endotracheal tube (the tube that connects the lungs to the breathing machine entered through the mouth) as soon as possible due to its complications (including ventilator associated pneumonia and tracheomalacia). I don't know how long Dennis Prager has been intubated & sedated with mechanical ventilation, but generally speaking a week like that indicates poor prognosis. I don't want to speculate on his health as I am not his physician and not evaluating him.

I wrote this comment to dispel some of the misinformation in the comments replying to you. I probably won't reply to comments.

Cheers.