Is It Really Safe To Come Out of the COVID-19 Lockdown Now?
The Lockdown and Social Distancing Were Necessary and Have Done Their Public Health Job.
Are you safe to go out now with COVID-19 still moving through the population? It depends; 1) on your overall health, 2) how robust your immune system is, and 3) where you are going. A sit-down restaurant, bar, concert, movie theater, church, synagogue, mosque, any indoor venue where you are sharing a crowded airspace for a period of time leaves you quite vulnerable to COVID-19 exposure and community spread. My family and I shun these situations now and will for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, a recent study found that 40% of all new COVID-19 infections are caused by other individuals who have no symptoms! In other words, even though someone looks, feels, and acts healthy does not mean they are not shedding air droplets of SARS CoV-2 viruses that could infect you.
What Is A Safe Space?
It all comes down to two things, Viral Load and Your Immune System. If someone sneezes in your direction without a mask, that is a massive viral load over a short period of time. If you are at a church service and everyone is singing, a few people with COVID-19 could create a viral load over time that overwhelms your personal immune system. A building space, such as my clinic, with a few healthy people in it for only a short period of time, practicing good social distancing, a building with a good ventilation system, plus everyone is masked and all surfaces sterilized, leaves you with little chance of exposure.
Furthermore, my clinic the Pain And Brain Healing Center, does not treat individuals with infectious disease. Any individual attempting to enter the clinic has their temperature and recent symptom history screened. We only allow a couple individuals into the building at the same time. Everyone is kept at least 6 feet apart, and all staff are masked. Furthermore, all surfaces in the clinic exposed to individuals are thoroughly sterilized before another individual comes in contact with them.
Why Am I So Diligent?
First, I am in male in my late 60s, so I am more vulnerable to the COVID-19, and my wife, of the same age, also works there. Most importantly my daughter runs the front desk and would bring any exposure home to my granddaughter, Daisy. Therefore, you can imagine that I run a very tight ship as far as preventing community spread in the clinic. So, I feel quite safe in my clinic and feel confident that all my patients are also safe. Therefore, the clinic is opening regular summer hours June 1 for all past and new patients. If you have any questions about coming into the clinic, please call Carolyn at 763-862-7100 to discuss your concerns.
Could You Wait Until There Is A Vaccine For COVID-19 To Come Out Of Your Home?
Maybe, but my review of the research by expert virologists convinces me that we will probably not see a truly safe and effective vaccine until the summer of 2021, and that would be an extremely fast development for a viral vaccine. Usually viral vaccines can take up to 10 years to develop. It is possible that the administration will push a vaccine out before next summer, but there is then a concern of its safety and effectiveness.
Furthermore, it may be more difficult to create a SARS CoV2 virus vaccine then is generally recognized by the media. As reported in an earlier article the disease COVID-19 is caused by a virus called SARS CoV2 which shares 80% of its genetic makeup with the 2003 virus SARS CoV1. Right now, 17 years after the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak caused by the coronavirus SARS CoV1 and seven years since the first coronavirus Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) case, there are still no corona vaccines despite dozens of attempts to develop them.
This does not mean that there will not be progress in creating treatments for COVID-19 infections. There has been good progress in antibody treatments and utilization of antiviral drugs. However, these treatments are not utilized until one has actually gotten sick with COVID-19.
So Where Does Your Hope Lie?
In the fact that a healthy robust innate and adaptive immune system can keep you from getting severely sick with COVID-19. The aggregate statistics from around the world point to the fact that about 95% of those who are exposed to this virus develop no symptoms or mild symptoms. That is more than 9 out of 10 come out okay, that’s good odds. The remaining 5% need hospitalization and treatment for the severity of the infection and about 1% die.
Most of those who get sick have chronic lifestyle diseases that lower the second part of the equation, your immune resilience leading to greater vulnerability to infection. The most prominent condition is insulin resistance that leads to hypertension, metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, and Type2 diabetes. These are the lifestyle diseases that have a greater incidence of COVID-19. I have multiple articles and videos on my website about these conditions. These are lifestyle disorders that can be corrected through diet, nutritional support, and exercise.
This treatment approach will save your life in the long run, and by lowering post meal glucose and insulin spikes it may protect you from COVID-19 in the short run by strengthening your immune system. If you have any of the indications of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome which cause elevated cholesterol and triglycerides along with hypertension, give our clinic a call and let us get on to correcting this immediately. If you have already moved on to prediabetes or diabetes, please read my articles on my website. They will explain how medications do not correct this disorder, and actually lead to many complications. Your best bet is Personalized Lifestyle Medicine, so give our clinic a call.
After implementing a lifestyle and dietary changes the next best thing you can do is read my previous two articles and implement the supplementation suggested there. In my review of the literature and of recent genomic studies on SARS CoV-2 to the most important things you can do for yourself is make sure your vitamin D levels are robust, 60 to 80 ng/dl and that you’re taking the supplement quercetin at 500 mg to 1,000 mg daily.
Again, I hope this article and the one before has been some assistance in keeping you and your loved ones safe and healthy. If you have any questions or comments you can send them to the clinic email at painandbrain@gmail.com. In my next article I will return to examine the role that free radical damage and oxidative stress from viral infections in our alveoli plays in this pandemic. I will examine the role that specific antioxidants can play to keep us safe and healthy in these trying times. In closing, I encourage you all to stay safe and healthy. Do all the best practices to protect yourself and your family. Please do everything possible to improve the health of your immune system to increase your chances of developing a vibrant immunity to this virus. That way we can all start return to a normal life again.