The Coronavirus continues to terrify people around the world, as the spread continues to worsen in multiple continents. With over 1.5 Million people infected and 95 thousand dead, the world is still knocked down and is trying to get back up. Today I was watching a video about what we know so far about the virus, and what are the best practices to take in order to avoid further damage from the virus. I have compiled a list of notes here for ease of access to important information.
- The spread of information continues in the 'Infodemic' of today. More people are using the internet simultaneously then ever before causing a change in economic and business practices.
- Many hoaxes are being proliferated around the internet such as "it's created by 5G" or "it's created in a lab in wuhan"
- Viruses are ancient creatures (potentially 450 million years worth of evolution), and are a formidable foe which we should not trifle with.
- It's almost certainly from a bat, pangolin or ant eater. Scientists can trace this from genomic sequencing data collated in the field from across the world. (https://www.gisaid.org/)
- A virus is a sub-life form: it doesn't have all the components to live by itself. It's got enough 'instructions' that once it's inside another species' cell, it can instruct that cell to make more copies of itself.
- The full extent of the economic damage is as of yet unknown. It will be in the trillion of dollars.
"We're playing a game that's a balance between staying in the house and wrecking the economy, or coming out of the house and basically killing more people. " David Sinclair
What is a virus
Viruses have one weakness which is their envelope. A virus, unlike a cannonball, it's like a bubble that you can pop by washing your hands because soap can kill this thing with the lipids it contains. On the outside of the bubble are little proteins that make it prickly, called the 'spike protein'. Like a ball covered by fishing hooks, the spikes are what 'engages' with our throat and lungs, allowing the virus to trick the hooked cells.
The Mutating Menace
If the coronavirus gets in contact with your skin, you aren't yet infected because of the layer of keratinized dead skin cells that prevent the virus from spreading inwardly and doing damage. Dead cells don't make copies. The danger of the virus stems from its ability to fool other cells by posing as a trojan horse, and fooling the immune system into 'letting it in'. This is why washing your hands often and well is so important, because it destroys the virus on contact with the soap, so that it never have a chance of reaching your mouth or nose. The virus has the ability to mutate and change its form over time, making it a race between vaccine development and virus spread. Each individual infection is its own experiment and the more people are infected the more chances the virus has to mutate beyond the capabilities of vaccines being developed with early strains.
However, if the virus were to get in contact with any live cells; a.k.a your mouth, eyes, or nose, it would be able to infiltrate the system and affect other cells. A great visualization from the interview was the comparison of the virus to glitter: it sticks to everything and is very hard to remove. It IS as immobile as a piece of glitter, e.g. it cannot crawl on your skin to reach your mouth or eyes, UNLESS you put it there by rubbing your eyes or something of the sort (wash your hands). Lipids contained in soap 'pop' the bubble of the virus, thus killing it and preventing spread.
How Covid-19 Mutates
Viruses exist in the animal world just as they do in the human world. Every once in a while when contact between humans and animals is strong enough for the virus to jump across the species barrier and get us. This is because humans are in such close contact with nature that such instances are becoming increasingly likely, if not inevitable with the current world model.
Whether or not the current strain that started in China will keep going around the world for a long (2-3 year) period is doubtful, but then again we've never had pandemics where billions of people may potentially be running around the world at dizzying speeds. Every infection is an experiment in itself, with the virus able to mutate frequently and potentially outrace our efforts to create vaccines.
Notable Dangerous Qualities:
The virus has an ingenious mechanism that allows it to remain unnoticed for the first 4-5 days, whilst still being highly infectious to others. This is why people need to stay home, to save lives and protect the healthcare system. The virus is very hard to monitor accurately, leading to the high possibility of infection cases being much higher than officially reported. The highest precautions should be taken by people around the world until the situation cools down. Exponential curves and viruses don't mix well, and this virus is said to be much worse than the influenza virus.
In a nutshell there are 2 possible outcomes long-term:
- Herd immunity: developed by enough of us getting it (±50%), so that immunity eventually builds naturally (but around 1% will die = hundreds of millions)
- vaccine arrives in time and saves everyone.
This is creating changes in people's behaviors, hunkering down at home, going out only for important shopping or exercise (yet still potentially proliferating the virus) at their own risk,
Playing cat and mouse with the virus:
Vaccines are being developed using the original virus sample from Wuhan, China back in early January. However the vaccines are now getting out of date, as viruses today are already different in that they are evolving and getting more distant from the original strain with every passing day.
Changes are being registered however not so far in places that are making a difference. Dr Sinclair says if the mutations start to occur in the outer layer (the bubble we talked about at the start), then we should worry, but that’s not the case yet. Hope remains for the rate of mutations to remain within the boundaries of vaccine development (unlikely). If resistance to vaccinations is similar to the influenza virus (it’s probably worse), they won’t work as well as they're supposed to or be 100% effective.
For the first time in the history of the planet, everyone is focused on just one thing, leading to unparalleled teamwork amongst different entities. One of the big things to be hopeful for is that scientists are now coming together more than ever. Instead of fighting and trying to prove who is the smartest person in the room, scientists are coming together to combat the common enemy. Using apps, chat groups, and the internet universities and organizations from around the world are uniting to share data, resources and knowledge.
“We’re being forced to learn how to come together.”
The spirit of unity in these very competitive fields of research is leading to increases of speed in drug approval rates, for example in the FDA. Attitudes are changing, hydroxychloroquine, a drug proposed by a Japanese hospital got approved by the FDA in America in record time based on the risk/reward of saving peoples lives with a relatively safe drug.
55 drugs are being tested around the world, and around 40 vaccines as well, that could have an impact on the treatment of the coronavirus in the coming months. The speed of testing of potential remedies is happening at an astonishing rate and we should see them hitting the market soon.
Unfortunately the infection rate amongst healthcare practitioners is around 10%, making the treatment of the sick a losing battle. As more healthcare practitioners die on the front line, the capacity to treat the increasing number of sick diminishes. This has led to protests and strikes by hospital workers, fighting for their rights to health and work, with some feeling too scared to go to work for fear of bringing the virus home to their own families.
The heroism of the healthcare practitioners and hospital workers however is inspiring and i want to extend my respects and condolences to those workers risking their lives everyday for the sake of others.
How we can move forward
A lot of people have different theories about how the world will end. Some say an asteroid or meteorite will extinguish life on earth, just like it did millions of years ago to the dinosaurs. Some say aliens will invade us from a far off place. But for scientists the obvious reality has been that viruses were always the prime contender. Even in 2010 a scientist predicted this exact strain of virus was likely to spread from a bat in Asia and mutate to infect humans (as has happened). Experts like Bill Gates have been telling us this for ages. And we need to get ready for the next one. Sooner rather than later. The key lies in reducing the risk of recurrence. Viruses are one threat amongst many in a world increasingly made vulnerable by anthropogenic (human-caused) encroachment into the natural world. Clear boundaries between nature and humanity need to be established for mutual interest between the two parties. Despite the one-way relationship that has existed since the industrial relationship until now, being that of predominantly capitalistic, extractive view of nature as ‘other’, we now need to reorganize the playing field. It NEEDS to be give and take, not just take. But how can an entity that needs to be changed, perform the change that needs to be done when its current state of being reflects a misunderstanding of the relationships upon which it stands? Like the snake who eats his own tale to quench his hunger, but only hurts himself. A deeper change needs to occur, one on the ideological level akin to shifting the paradigm.
Ban the wild animal markets worldwide. China did this in early February, which was a good thing, however some say this was even too late. Wet markets should be banned globally not only for the obvious ethical concerns, but for avoiding the recurrence of deadly viruses being spread to humans.
Monitor the environment. We knew ahead of time that the coronaviruses found in bats more than a decade ago were contagious to humans. We need to make kits to track the genome of viruses and collate databases to monitor how viruses, bacteria or fungi are being treated. There needs to be a coalition of scientists and researchers ready to go at a moments notice, to react much faster than we did this time. Dr Sinclair proposes a sort of Bio Force similar to the Air force but for viruses and pandemic control and emergency teams. This group should be highly trained and coordinated. A global surveillance system of viruses both in the animal world and in humans. Anonymously detecting temperature variation or other factors related to viruses. Also being able to detect and treat viruses remotely, thus saving time and lives who are at risk when real people get in physical contact with the infected.
It’s too soon to speculate the full cost of the coronavirus pandemic, but one thing is for sure, humans need to stop pushing into nature. Since the pandemic began, more wildlife has been coming up in cities around the world. Pollution levels have dropped. Causes for hope are appearing just as soon as nature gets a break and a chance to heal itself. So, if from an environmental perspective, the coronavirus was a good thing, then we need to do something to make sure the routine disaster potential of another pathogenic virus is reduced. When the whole world stays home, things slow down so to speak; less pollution, less flights, less buzz, this is a good thing. We need more of this in one way or another, who knows how this will take place in the future, maybe via a carbon tax or monetary incentive not to pollute. The best alternatives exist already via renewable energy resources, organic sustainably sourced foods (albeit at an unsustainable price), and low-environmental impact transportation methods.
Some helpful tips
Viruses are omnipresent in the world as we know it, they exist in the thousands on the surface of our skin, in the gut, anywhere where we have an ‘ecosystem’ in the body. In addition to the bacteria, viruses act like bad hitchhikers, which we can avoid 'giving a free ride' by eliminating through hand washing and avoiding contact with eyes and mouth.
Don’t smoke. This is the number one thing you can do if you are a smoker. This is the best time to stop, and you can increase your chance of a healthy immune system by reducing stress in your body from pollutants.
Optimize the body with aerobics or HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Stay active as much as possible throughout the day, perform flexibility and joint exercises in general. Don’t be low in iron, vitamin C and especially vitamin D. Many studies show that vitamin D is a prime contributor to the health of your immune system (2,500 units per day). If you have direct contact with sunlight for a few hours a day, you don’t need to supplement. Now is the time to get into shape and our diets need to be predominantly plant-based to support health and wellness.
They talk about Xenohormesis for health, where xeno means between species and Hormesis means stress. The concept is if you stress your food, they will give you healthy molecules instead of you stressing your own body to get those same molecules. Colored foods; dark blue blueberries, Kale, red cabbage, the darker and deeper the color the healthier it is (as a general rule of thumb) i.e. eat a diverse variety of foods of different colors, to get a more balanced diet for optimal health. We can make sure to wash our produce well before use or let it outside for a day.
Humidity also is helpful at 45-50% relative humidity for creating a healthy environment for your body. In a study with guinea pigs and viruses, if the humidity was of a middle range, they didn't catch the virus, whereas when the humidity was really dry or really wet they caught the virus. We have enzymes in our body that protect us from viruses, they live in mucus that is in our throat and lungs, medium humidity (at least not too low or too high) optimizes the mucus layer in our bodies to be in the best condition to fight viruses and bacteria. If you don’t live in a humid climate you can buy a humidifier to keep your house at the right level.
Thanks for reading guys, this has been good to spend time writing and learning at the same time, and hopefully shedding some light for other people on the current situation. Unfortunately this pandemic is still unfolding and as of yet, there is no end in sight. However, we can learn a lot from each other by being kind, helpful and generous in the spirit of unity to combat this virus together. There is a lot of cause for hope despite all the devastating damage that has happened around the world. For many, this pandemic was inevitable, yet the change that will come afterwards has been way overdue. More respect for nature is expected to ensue, hopefully we can incorporate natural equity within our economic, social and political systems to reach a positive and productive conclusion for future generations. In hindsight, the past few months have been interesting to learn how to get closer to myself and my own interests in life, I have learned to code, make bread, new languages, stay in contact with friends and loved ones, and how to meditate and do yoga. The potential for growth never left us, we can always choose to learn from our circumstances. I hope evolution comes smoothly, rather than forcefully imposed. Sending you all prayers of health and wellness.
Peace,
Dizzybee