“THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR
IS FEAR ITSELF”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
by: E.P. Unum
November 15, 2020
A professor of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto sent this clearly worded update to his family:
For this pandemic there’s a greater chance of survival contracting the infection today, November 2020, than there was for those who became infected back in February or March of 2020. The reason for this is that doctors and scientists know more about Covid-19 now than they did back in February and March and hence are able to treat patients better.
I will list 5 important things that we know now that we didn’t know in February 2020 for your understanding and for the expressed purpose of assuaging any fears you might have.
1. COVID-19 was initially thought to cause deaths due to pneumonia - a lung infection and so Ventilators were thought to be the best way to treat sick patients who couldn’t breathe. Now we are realizing that the virus causes blood clots in the blood vessels of the lungs and other parts of the body and this causes the reduced oxygenation . Now we know that just providing oxygen by ventilators will not help but we have to prevent and dissolve the micro clots in the lungs. This is why we are using drugs like Aspirin and Heparin ( blood thinners that prevents clotting) as protocol in treatment regimens.
2. Previously patients used to drop dead on the road or even before reaching a hospital due to reduced oxygen in their blood - OXYGEN SATURATION. This was because of HAPPY HYPOXIA where even though the oxygen saturation was gradually reducing, the COVID-19 patients did not have symptoms until it became critically less, like sometimes even 70%. Normally we become breathless if oxygen saturation reduces below 90%. This breathlessness is not triggered in Covid patients and so we were getting the sick patients very late to the hospitals in February 2020. Now since knowing about happy hypoxia we are monitoring oxygen saturation of all Covid patients with a simple home use pulse oximeter and getting them to hospital if their oxygen saturation drops to 91% or less. This gives more time for doctors to correct the oxygen deficiency in the blood and a better survival chance today. And the declining death rates reflect this given the rising infection rates.
3. We did not have drugs to fight the corona virus in February-March 2020. We were only treating the complications caused by it... hypoxia. Hence most patients became severely infected. Now we have 2 important medicines FAVIPIRAVIR & REMDESIVIR ... These are ANTIVIRALS that can kill the corona virus. By using these two medicines we can prevent patients from becoming severely infected and therefore cure them BEFORE THEY GO TO HYPOXIA. This knowledge we have today; we did not have it back in February-March 2020.
4. Many Covid-19 patients die not just because of the virus but also due the patient’s own immune system responding in an exaggerated manner called CYTOKINE STORM. This stormy strong immune response not only kills the virus but also kills the patients. In February 2020 we didn’t know how to prevent it from happening. Today, we know that easily available medicines called Steroids, that doctors around the world have been using for almost 80 years can be used to prevent the cytokine storm in some patients.
5. Now we also know that people with hypoxia became better just by making them lie down on their belly - known as prone position. Apart from this in June of 2020 Israeli scientists discovered that a chemical known as Alpha Defensin produced by the patient’s White blood cells can cause the micro clots in blood vessels of the lungs and this could possibly be prevented by a drug called Colchicine used over many decades in the treatment of Gout. So now we know for sure that patients have a better chance at surviving the COVID-19 infection today than in February-March 2020 and that is reassuring
Going forward there’s nothing to panic about Covid-19 if we remember that a person who gets infected today has a better chance at survival than one who got infected earlier this year.
Let’s continue to follow precautions, wear masks, wash hands and practice social distancing. Please distribute this message, as we all need some positive, encouraging news to balance against the fear mongering and hysteria so often proffered by the news media and talking heads. None of these seem to want to speak to the issue of how many people with Covid survive nor on what the actual survival rate today is, which is 99.6% That ought to be comforting to all.
