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t's Friday again. That went fast...or did it?
"Time is relative; its only worth depends upon what we do as
it is passing." - Albert Einstein
Yesterday, I wrote about sanitizing the areas where we work
and live. I mentioned that our attempt to clean, sanitize,
sterilize, and isolate ourselves as healthy people has been
the strategy for acute mitigation to avoid the health-care
surge so that our hospitals, if challenged, would have
adequate resources. I also pointed out that long term, there
are unintended consequences when our immune system is not
challenged by microorganisms naturally in our environment.
To maintain a healthy immune system and our ability to have
a robust response, we need to be challenged by our normal
environment. A healthy immune system will defend us and we
see this when we analyze the data.
For the most part, healthy people who get COVID-19 get an
asymptomatic or mild infection. Unhealthy people do not fare
as well. Analysis of the death rate in Maryland (54% of
deaths are from nursing facilities), New York (almost 5,000
nursing facility deaths), and Italy (the oldest per capita
population in Europe) demonstrates that the infirm and
elderly are most vulnerable and have the highest mortality.
This does not mean that an otherwise healthy person cannot
get very ill and even die; this has happened, but this makes
up a very small fraction of the severely ill. Moreover, we
have learned that we must train and protect the health care
workers who take care of these compromised patients.
I continue to advocate the continuation of good hand
hygiene, social distancing, and strict isolation of these
who are sick. We need innovative strategies that decrease
the risk in heavily trafficked areas to decrease
transmission, particularly in airports, subways, elevators,
public bathrooms, etc. Let's do everything we can to make
our immune system as strong and capable as possible so that
even if challenged, our immune system defends us and wins.
This is our best defense against COVID-19, heart disease,
cancer, and stroke. And consider this: who is most
vulnerable to doing poorly with a COVID-19 infection? Is it
the overworked 55-year old sedentary obese male who smokes
and has sleep apnea or the 72-year old who eats a
plant-based diet, gets regular exercise, and gets 7-8 hours
of sleep? Of course, the answer is obvious; good nutrition,
adequate sleep, exercise, and controlling stress tips the
scale in our direction for all maladies including COVID-19.
The numbers:
Maryland:
30,485 cases -/- 1,453 deaths -/- 4.76% fatality rate
Diagnostics and Therapeutics:
Take your vitamin D-3, at least 2000 units per day!
Here is
the latest publication.
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