COVID19: The Beat Goes On

Public health agencies everywhere are failing to contain this exciting new viral invention,

and the hip kids are getting it. Silicon Valley people have stopped kissing, hugging and shaking hands, and are starting to wear face masks. San Jose international airport looks increasingly like Narita. 

Projected global death tolls are rising; the data available so far suggests that while the majority of cases resolve, about 15% go on to develop severe pneumonia and about 15% of these will die. Given the numbers likely to become infected this will soon constitute a public health burden so great as to be unaffordable. It will become more so as increasing numbers of health care workers burn out and fall ill and the impact of factory closure on our over-extended economy starts to bite, restricting the supply of strategic medical supplies, increasing death rates among the severely ill and and finally tipping us all over the edge of the known economic world. 

Why is containment so difficult?

1. The incubation period for COVID19 remains at an average of three days but is slowly extending out in a minority of cases to 24 days (1).
2. Asymptomatic transmission is now a given and while aerosol transmission seems to be the most common, ALL bodily secretions must now be considered as potential sources of infection (1). COVID19 is a pneumoenteric virus, ie one that can thrive and multiply in both the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts. 
3. The test kits are throwing up significant numbers of false negatives (2).
4. Coronaviruses, once in aerosol, may travel 100 metres or more from their origin (3).
5. When agencies screen for the virus, they find it. A recent CDC report reported that in a group of 210 patients in the USA deemed to be at risk of COVID19, 5% tested positive (4).

All this is bad enough but there may be worse to come. A Taiwanese doctor reports that after infection and recovery a reinfection can readily occur, and may be more dangerous the second time round due to cytokine storming (5). In this state a hyper-reactive immune system creates such inflammatory stress that vital organs are damaged, leading rapidly to death. It is important to note that this appears to be a personal communication, and has not yet been substantiated.

Given the failure of the medical establishment to come up with an effective treatment (so far), we must all learn to fend for ourselves and do the best we can.

I have mentioned Viral Nose Spray and KIB500 in previous posts, and now here is another strategy which may be helpful when (if) a cytokine storm breaks.

The trick, I think, is not to be excessively prone to chronic inflammatory stress in the first place. Here I am referring to the combination of omega 3 HUFA’s and lipophilic polyphenols that has proven so effective in alleviating the symptoms of chronic inflammation in many other disease states.

References

1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v1.full.pdf
2. Xie X, Zhong Z, Zhao W, Zheng C, Wang F, Liu J. Chest CT for Typical 2019-nCoV Pneumonia: Relationship to Negative RT-PCR Testing. Radiology. Published Online: Feb 12 2020https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.2020200343
3. Yu ITS, Li Y, Wong TW, Tam W, Chan AT, Lee JHW, Leung DYC, Ho T. Evidence of Airborne Transmission of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Virus. NEJM 2004; 350:1731-1739
4. Bajema KL, Oster AM, McGovern OL, et al. Persons Evaluated for 2019 Novel Coronavirus — United States, January 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:166–170. DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6906e1 
5. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3876197