People have been asking me about a story that came out in the last few days about 94% of deaths having co-morbidities. The implication many have made is that most don’t really die from COVID, they die from something else, and they also happen to have COVID.It’s certainly true that contributing factors can make symptoms worse, and many of those with symptoms have another underlying issue. But I think it would be a mistake to think that this means COVID can be dismissed as no big deal. The fact is, the list of contributing factors is long, and includes the following:
age
asthma or COPD
heart conditions
kidney conditions
liver disease
high blood pressure
diabetes
obesity
auto-immune disease
use of NSAID anti-inflammatory medications
being immunocompromised (HIV infected, undergoing cancer treatment, under medication for a transplant)
vitamin-D deficiency
type A blood (Type O appears to be protective)
A lot of people are on this list, including me, since I have Celiac Disease, an auto-immune disease. Think of it this way. If someone dies because they got pushed in front of a train, did they die because of the train, or because someone pushed them? Well, both. Getting shoved generally doesn’t kill you, but it does if you get shoved into a train.COVID on it’s own may not be very deadly on it’s own, but it is in combination with a lot of other conditions.
The good news is, COVID is getting more survivable as treatment gets better, and also perhaps since people are getting exposed to lower viral loads because of mask wearing. We should be concerned, but not fearful, and we can also be optimistic that things are getting better!
I’ve also been asked by several people recently about a vaccine. You may remember my post about ADE, Antibody Dependent Enchancement. It’s a rare phenomena in which a virus can use an antibody against a previous infection to infect the immune system (link to my original post below). This can make a second infection much worse than the first. This only occurs with a small handful of viruses, but SARS, MERS, and likely SARS-2 are some of them. Because of this phenomena, I am suspicious of vaccines against SARS-2, and will wait to see what happens before I get one for myself, or recommend others do. I am not an anti-vaccine person in general! I have gotten the annual flu shot many times! But SARS-2 is different. If someone involved with the vaccine creation process can convince me it’s safe, I will certainly let you know.
Don’t fear, but be smart!
Erik
doubloondiagnostic.com 