Corona Crazy, six months later….
I don’t know about you, but I have Corona Fatigue. What does that mean? It means that I have been bombarded with information, most of the time conflicting information regarding the Corona-19 pandemic for over half a year.
When your authorities tell you that you are in a pandemic, you automatically lean into fear. The collective consciousness will pull images from the fourteenth century (Black Death) or perhaps the 1819 Spanish Flu to further intimidate rational thinking. We respond on gut instinct (The sky is falling, we are all going to die) . We recall tragic scenes we have heard from our grandparents or great-grandparents. We replay the movie Outbreak, Contagion, or Infection and our emotions embrace the images of fear and death.
What we give our attention to, we will attract. You can do some in-depth study in quantum physics for further information. If we are constantly rehearsing disaster in our imagination, it is hard for our brain to shift into calm rational thinking.
As a practitioner, I am getting information from medical experts, the CDC, the WHO, as well as news anchors. The messages are not aligned. By this I mean that when you look at the number of infections that are being tossed about on social media, contrast those with what you are seeing from your local governmental authorities, and then try to reconcile that information with what the heads of hospitals are saying, you can truly go into information overload, and become overwhelmed.
Part of the problem with the reporting of Covid-19 numbers is that there is no universal standard amongst the states. I don’t think that there are 50 different ways of reporting the viral stats, but neither is there a consistent rubric of reporting. For example: There is a difference between someone dying OF Covid-19 and WITH Covid-19. Some reporting authorities are reporting every case of death as a Covid-19 death IF the patient tested positive for the virus. The patient could have actually died of a heart attack, a car accident, or some other catastrophe. They will still be listed in the death toll due to Covid-19 being present. -data
Remember at the beginning of this pandemic season, the Top Docs used a computer model that showed catastrophic outcomes with this virus. https://www.heritage.org/public-health/commentary/failures-influential-covid-19-model-used-justify-lockdowns For many weeks, all we heard was infection rate was rising. We were told to stay inside and flatten the curve. We were told to social distance. Our neighborhoods and cities were shut down. Some of us lost our jobs. Some of us had salaries reduced. Some of us have endured domestic abuse. Schools were closed. Emotionally, these events, coupled with the negative projections of impending doom have led to increased suicide rate and prescriptions for anti-depressant drugs have increased.
The infection rate is not statistically stable either. In our area in Texas, each time a person takes a Corona virus test, and tests positive for Covid-19, they are added to the list. Unfortunately, if a person is positive, he has to have a second test, hopefully negative, to show that the virus has passed, and the person is no longer contagious. Sadly, sometimes a person will have as many as four positive tests before he will get one that is negative. There is only one person who took all five tests, but the tally is increased for each test. Using this model, the infection rate is overstated. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407620301676
And then we have the mask issue. Again, we have heard all must mask, and then the converse, only the contagious need to mask. This controversy has been raging for months. Stores have signage that requires masks, but do not enforce. Or, stores put out press releases that masks are mandatory, but then rescind those requirements just days later. As a healthcare practitioner, I do not advise people who are not ill to wear facemasks. There have been no randomized placebo-controlled studies that state that wearing a facemask will inhibit viral transmission. Further, wearing a facemask can actually INCREASE the risk of respiratory infection. I cite passages from the National Institute of Health.
The public might wear masks to avoid infection or to protect others. During the 2009 pandemic of H1N1 influenza (swine flu), encouraging the public to wash their hands reduced the incidence of infection significantly whereas wearing facemasks did not. 5 There is no good evidence that facemasks protect the public against infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID‐19. 6
Indeed, experiments have shown that surgical and cotton masks do not trap the SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19) virus, which can be detected on the outer surface of the masks for up to 7 days. 7, 8 Thus, a pre‐symptomatic or mildly infected person wearing a facemask for hours without changing it and without washing hands every time they touched the mask could paradoxically increase the risk of infecting others.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323223/
For example, the US Surgeon General advised against buying masks for use by healthy people. One important reason to discourage widespread use of face masks is to preserve limited supplies for professional use in health-care settings. Universal face mask use in the community has also been discouraged with the argument that face masks provide no effective protection against coronavirus infection. https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600(20)30134-X.pdf
With all of this conflicting information, it is easy to become stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. This is not good for our overall immune response. We each must find a way to navigate this season without further damaging the immune system. There are many options available: nutritional therapy, Emotional Freedom Technique, meditation, exercise, and of course prescription drugs. You can Google our YouTube Channel for further information on these topics.
The most important weapon in our arsenal is mindset. If we believe we have a strong immune system and can defeat the virus, we most probably will. If we are fearful and believe that the virus will overcome our respiratory system, it probably will. Thoughts are things. Thoughts manifest into reality. Guard your thoughts. Have an offensive plan for defeating the virus.
Many times, people ask me what I do to protect my immune system. First of all, I do not have any of the underlying co-morbid conditions that would cause me to be at risk for infection. I eat fairly healthy 80% of the time. I am limiting my travel. I am not putting myself in an area where there are large crowds of people. I am taking an antiviral herb as a preventative measure against the inadvertent exposure during my daily tasks. After all, I do work in a clinic, and I am exposed (to an extent) to people who are ill. As far as I know, no one in my practice has had covid-19.
What I do know is that hunkering down in my home, not going out, not exposing myself to the everyday environmental pathogens or mingling with other humans is detrimental to my immune system. Fear and anxiety is detrimental to my immune system. Using common sense to cut through the nonsense will go far in protecting most of us from the Corona Crazies.
Until next time,
Dr. Polly
#HumbleHolisticDoc