My sniffles continue to improve and clear.
Coronavirus remains my current obsession. Rather than push myself to work on the Clown music, I've decided to simple pause and do what I want for a few days, a holiday of sorts.
I'm somewhat disturbed and annoyed at our idiotic government though. In some countries: China, South Korea, Italy, where extreme measures have been imposed, incidents of the virus are reducing. Our government has openly stated that it has no plans to reduce the virus, instead allowing it to grow in intensity to induce a 'herd immunity'. A completely stupid idea.
Well, we can ignore governments. I read a report today in The Guardian online that the virus appears to be most infectious before symptoms manifest, and that the symptoms may in fact be a sign that the virus is conquered by the body. This led to a hypothesis about why it is so deadly to the weak and elderly almost to an exact correlation.
The hypothesis is that the virus is simply not easily detected by the body, and that in those with weaker immune system it grows too much before being detected. It is this growth phase that is the pre-symptomatic phase, it is accumulating in the body without being recognised as a pathogen, yet is still infectious. I've also read that the virus is worse for those with repeated exposure, that there is an accumulation sort of effect, so this would match this hypothesis.
What conclusions can be made from this?
First. A good immune system is important to naturally combat this (or indeed any) virus. There are proven ways to boost immunity and stay generally healthy: Relaxation (lack of stress), Exercise, Sleep, Healthy Diet, and Vitamin D. Vitamin D is the only real food supplement that seems to have any evidence of effect in combating diseases. The effect is small, and Zinc might have a negligible effect too, but all vitamins tend to be beneficial to health only when diet deficient in them.
Secondly. We can speculate that those with auto-immune disorders would be more resilient to Coronavirus than one would expect. I wonder if somehow activating the immune system is possible; a sort of 'alert vaccine'. Most vaccines are nullified or harmless variations of the infection, but this idea is an actually harmful one, so that the body recognises that something is wrong and becomes activated. Perhaps, I could wildly speculate, getting SARS or catching another Coronavirus, might by a cure for Coronavirus. If this is true, then please post my Nobel Prize by Special Delivery.
Thirdly. That isolating oneself, which might negatively mood and sleep patterns, might be less advisable than expected. Being active and outdoors, though away from people who may be infectious, would be better. Also, buying and eating fresh foods would be better that stockpiling foods with poorer nutritional value.
Fourthly. Those with weaker immune systems might become infection factories. If an elderly person in a care home became infected, they could easily infect their peers silently, resulting in mass transmission.
