Thoughts on #COVID-19

As of March 15 2020

Outside of the best thing you can do and #StayHome and #washyourhands and general avoidance.

This is a nasty little virus and everyone is susceptible, obviously the elderly more so but reports out of France are not good for the under-50 crowd either.

The best thing we can do is try and soften the surge and give researchers time for better treatments and hopefully a vaccine.

The number trajectory that we are on is not good.  So again stay home as much as you can. And assume you are a carrier and act accordingly.  If you have a cold you avoid people, do the same. Protect your family and community. This disease has a life cycle of about 24 days potentially.  But you may carry the bug for almost 40 days. But herein lies the issue. According to the reports out of Italy is that the younger crowd spreads and transmits the virus and gets sick  5-11 days after exposure… So you maybe and assume you are contagious for that time. In the this same crowd it take being sick 7-10 days to be sick enough to seek hospital care. So this delay is the false sense of security causing the transmission.

The hospitals are already near capacity. 

The good news is we can learn from S Korea/Italy/Seattle/NYC as we have the lag time before the tsunami shows up and hopefully we can shrink it and extend it. 

I am not an MD/viralogist/public health etc…

But here is my take-away from everything I have read/understand most of these views are coming out of studies or observations from people way smarter than me.

South Korea has bent the curve and the case load thru rapid and expansive testing and their apparent go to treatment is a mix of Zinc and Chloroquine (anti malarial IV)

Singapore/Taiwan has also got ahead of this thru massive screening and Singapore also used a combo of Rimsidvir (AIDS drug to prevent RNA replication) and the Chloroquine (as above, this drug works by preventing the destruction of blood cells, as in a case of Malaria)

So to me I see these as lessons and maybe good ideas.

We don’t have 20 years for studies to prove anything much less two weeks.

So here is what I think you can do besides avoidance, hygiene and patience.

Sleep

Take your vitamins/multi (Zinc, D, C maybe be beneficial, certainly can’t hurt)

Get some sunlight and go for walks, thankfully it is getting warmer out for us in Minnesota.

Now on to Chinese Medicine and Theory

Certainly we think tonics/adaptogens may improve your resilience to disease.

(Ginseng/huang qi/ashwanda/etc)

There are ‘anti-viral’ herbs/formulas

(yin qiao san/gan mao ling/ban lan gan/etc)

Now here is where it gets more theory like but how I understand it….

There are different stages to the disease and if you are 80’s in the nursing home, none of this is really practically helpful.  But here it goes...

So in TCM theory the big idea is to expel the the “pathogenic factor”

So if you have a fever you don’t want it to go deeper.

If you have a cough you don’t want it to settle.

If it settles you need to expel it from the lungs.

So what is the answers…(besides avoidance)

So personally lots of spicy food.  Keep your mucus membranes clear and superficial.

We want to use pungent and drier spices (ginger/pepper/garlic/onion) etc…

We don’t want anything to linger.

Certainly honey/ginger/teas for the throat if you have cough and use regular OTC cough drops (licorice/zinc/etc)

There are some specialized formulas for pneumonia type conditions that I can track down the names but we can’t really get a hold of much for formulations.  

And our Brilliant Prof Dr Lu just did a chat with us that hopefully I can share for more theoretical insight.

I will share any more ideas or thoughts that I have that may be helpful.

But as good MN, now is not the time for bland scandanavian food!

Spice it up, will it help?  

I have no idea but I hope so!

It is gonna be a rocky month or so but we will make it thru. 

Stay well everyone,

Mason