Disease Trajectory
Stats By State
Essential Reads
Helpful Information – PDF
Staying Home Sanely
Germ Warfare?
Cytokine Storm
Post-Corona World
Symptoms:
From CDC
From WHO
Skin Symptoms
COVID Vs. The Spanish Flu:
Biospace.com
CNN.com
Why Corona is worse than the Flu:
Hopkins Medicine
LiveScience.com
VOX.com
Scroll for Full Transcript
You have stumbled onto another episode of Get Your FILL, Financial Independence and Long Life, where we strive for ways to achieve those two goals. While you’ve been enjoying the original score by Carl Zukroff of the band, Blue Hotel, I’ve been reading all I can find about the coronavirus, COVID-19. There are a lot of links to excellent information, videos and articles, on the website, GetYourFillPodcast.com.
What is it?
Coronavirus is a family of viruses. The same family that caused SARS, MERS and the common cold. And you know there’s no cure for the common cold.
That’s because it’s a virus, not a germ. It’s not alive, that’s why antibiotics aren’t helpful. It’s just a protein wrapped in fat that, after entering your body, alters the genetic code of cells and sends them off to mutate and multiply.
Symptoms
For most people, it’s just like the flu or a cold – or even allergies. Sneezing, fever, runny nose, body aches, etc. If it lodges in the digestive system instead of the respiratory system, you could have the symptoms of a stomach flu.
Sometimes our bodies work too hard to kill the mutated cells and that can cause pneumonia and respiratory symptoms that ultimately make us sick. Doctors call that a cytokine storm and it’s basically your body attacking the rogue cells and other cells. Cytokine storm syndrome is a major cause of COVID-19-related deaths.
How it spreads
How does it get into your body? In most cases, it’s because you put it there. You picked up the virus somewhere and then touched your eyes, nose or mouth. That is actually surprisingly easy for several reasons:
· It can live for a long time outside the body
· About 80% of the people who have develop very mild symptoms or none at all
· It can take up to 2 weeks to develop symptoms – but you’re contagious the whole time
So here’s an example: Sandy is feeling a little tired and achy so goes to the local grocery store, picks up a few things including some ibuprofen for the aches. While there, Sandy happens to sneeze in the paper goods. A few drops of the sneeze fall onto a box of tissues. The next day, during early senior hours, Elvira goes into the store with her mask and gloves and buys the box of tissues, sneezed on by Sandy the day before. Elvira goes home, dutifully washes her hands and puts away the groceries. Her eye is a little itchy so she rubs it and voila, introduces the virus into her body. Meanwhile Sandy is feeling much better and has no idea that she has infected and may have killed Elvira.
Why it’s so serious
So if only 20% of the people get seriously ill and only some of those people die, why is it such a big deal? Doesn’t the regular flu kill tens of thousands of people every year – why all the drama?
There seem to be three major reasons why this virus is so much more serious than the flu:
· No one has a natural immunity – unlike the flu where lots of people either have shots or have an immunity from prior contact, this has only been in humans for a few months
· The gestation period is much longer – 1-4 days for the flu vs. 1-14 days for corona, meaning you can get and share the disease for 2 weeks before you even develop one symptom
· It’s about twice as communicable that the flu. – see the great video on the website, GetYourFILLPodcast.com
· It takes longer to get better. About 10 times more people have to be hospitalized and about 10 times more people will die from COVID-19 than the flu.
How do I avoid getting it?
