Covid-19
Coronavirus
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‘A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived.’
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HISTORY AND BACKGROUND OF
CORONAVIRUS
If you succumbed to the notion that the Coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge humans have faced you would not be alone. It is a universal theme to believe we are living in a unique time in history; that never before have humans been so challenged to overcome the worst adversity in our history. But I think it’s always good to check our current point of view against actual historical events, as it can help to keep things in perspective.
The number one all time worst plague on record was the Black Death in the mid-14th Century. It wiped out 30%–50% of the population of Europe and it took more than 200 years for the population to recover. Were Coronavirus to approach that level of morbidity, it would mean not 400,000 deaths, but more than 3 billion.
A lot of what we do is what I call “Science in the Middle.” This is science in a well-established field that has been around for years or even decades. You want to know something about a big population, so you take a sample of the population, study it, and then extrapolate to the population. But sometimes, we are looking at a new disease, and we have to work from what I call “Science at the Beginning.” Here you are seeing something new, never seen before, but you think it is important, and so you put out a description of everything you can about it with the hope it helps people look for more cases.
The future of
Coronavirus
Looking forward, as we are loosening the lockdown, the threat of a resurgence of coronavirus is a real possibility. We cannot declare a full victory until we have resumed life without lockdown, and we have, at worse, an ‘influenza-like’ rate of new cases and hospitalizations. I propose that in the meantime, encouraging face masks to be worn in public would be a good compromise between total lockdown and total freedom that risks resurgence of this invisible enemy.
There is much talk about a vaccine for Coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci has said it may take 18 to 24 months to create, Bill Gates says closer to a year or less. Everyone agrees, if we can just make it until a vaccine is developed all our troubles will be over. Unfortunately, like everything else about SARS-CoV-2, it’s not quite that simple. To learn more about why this may be the case, please read Chapter 6 in Dr. Quay’s new book, Coronavirus Survival Manual.
CORONAVIRUS SURVIVAL MANUAL
A Physician's Guide to Keep You and Your Family Healthy During the Coronavirus Pandemic and Beyond
TESTING YOURSELF FOR
CORONAVIRUS AT HOME
In a study of over 4000 patients from more than 40 countries from around the world (the questionnaire was translated into 27 languages) major changes were noted when it came to the ability to taste and smell, and unusual smells were changed in a major way.
For your own home test, these are the questions you should ask (from the published paper):
- Have you had overall changes in taste?
- Have you experienced a change in the taste for sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or savory?
- Have you noticed a change in smell?
- Smell is reduced?
- Smell is changed (the quality of the smell has changed)?
- Can you smell things that aren’t there (for example, smell burning when there is no fire)?
- Does your sense of smell come and go?
The results showed that loss of smell, loss of taste, and changes to what people say is a chemical-like taste or a metallic taste were very frequent in CoronaVirus patients. In a study comparing CoronaVirus patients to patients with influenza, 71% of CoronaVirus patients reported a change in taste or smell compared to 17% for influenza.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FROM ELEVATORMEDICINE™
True or False: You’ll definitely have a cough if you have coronavirus
Answer: Both. FALSE: One in five people infected with SARS-CoV-2 never have any symptoms, including a cough.
TRUE: A simple test I explained on a March 18, 2020 blogpost The 11-second Home Coronavirus Test has >85% sensitivity for CoronaVirus patients. That is, if you take 85 people who test positive by a lab test, one week earlier they would have been identified with this easy, free home test. It can look one week into the future!
If you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, you don’t have coronavirus
Answer: Partially true. I discuss this in Chapter 8 of this book. You can also learn more in this blog: The 11-second Home CoronaVirus Test.
You can’t get coronavirus in hot climates or cold weather. Also, snow kills coronavirus and hot baths kill coronavirus in your body
Answer: False, False, False! Every region, from equatorial Africa to above-the-Artic-Circle Scandinavia, has CoronaVirus. Laboratories store viruses in the cold to preserve them and if baths could kill germs, antibiotics would have never been the miracle drugs of the 20th century that they were.
You can get coronavirus from a mosquito bite
Answer: False. Malaria and many other diseases are contracted by a mosquito bite but not SARS-CoV-2. Someday, maybe, if a large enough percentage of the world’s population has the virus, there will be a small risk that a mosquito can travel from an infected to a non-infected patient and cause the disease. But put this worry out of your mind for now.