COVID Corner

The best data available to us on a national level comes out of the epicenter of New York City. The coronavirus’s death rate is about 0.7% where the flu is around 0.1-0.2%. That is not insignificant. It is like putting 1,000 people you have met over the course of your life on stage and being required to pick 7 of them to die, but you are only allowed to pick the most vulnerable to die.  If you put this into contact, the most vulnerable to die, fall into a category of 0.00057% of the population. You are 3x more likely to die from a MVA than from this virus if you are not in the most vulnerable category. That is also not an insignificant stat to ignore since most of us do not need to fear this virus.

I am bit surprised to hear at this juncture people still asking why all of these measures have been instilled. It’s actually quite simple: we were all unprepared for a pandemic so we shut everything down till we got more educated on this virus’s game plan, prepared our hospitals, and armed our providers with the best knowledge, testing, and safety measures. For these reasons, I fully endorsed this quarantine, but as everything we do as humans, we like to swing the pendulum too far either direction in my opinion.

Bottom Line: Let me warn you now that all the talk over next weeks to months will be about pockets of rising cases of this virus. Expect it. Anticipate it. But, do not fear it. We are markedly more prepared and educated as a medical entity than we were 6 weeks ago. Do we have all the answers or ways to prevent death? No. But, we do know it preys mainly on the most vulnerable.

Now, I hate to sound like I am just plugging my book that came out this week, but the fact remains is that fear is driven solely by misinformation or a distortion of reality. (https://www.amazon.in/dp/B087XBKG6L).  I believe after 20 years of practicing medicine that the definition of what ‘healthy’ looks like is markedly misrepresented by the traditional medical community and by lay people alike.  My book lays out exactly what ‘healthy’ really looks like in terms of how your body best functions. If you follow my advice and insights, you do not need to fear this virus just like you do not fear getting killed in a car accident. You simply just wear your seatbelt and drive with caution not fear.  

This is exactly how this world needs to start responding to this virus or the treatment will be more devastating than the virus which I think it is starting to shift.