ACE and acute respiratory distress syndrome: Thus, blunting the ACE-1–Ang II–AT1R axis while enhancing the ACE-1–Ang II–AT2R, the ACE-2–Ang(1-7)-AT2R or the ACE-2–Ang(1-7)–MasR receptor axes (Figure 1, panel B) likely protects from ARDS triggered by infectious pathogens, including coronaviruses (Dhawale et al., 2016; Imai et al., 2005; Kaparianos and Argyropoulou, 2011; Meng et al., 2014).