CORONAVIRUS MO
Can you spare another few minutes of coronavirus chatter? The Wall Street Journal yesterday carried an article about a New Jersey school teacher who took his class to Italy and contracted the coronavirus and almost died. His story is terrifying and his warnings dire.
Sometimes the littlest things, though, shed big light. In this article, the little thing is that the man is asthmatic and a self-proclaimed "germophobe." He said he's constantly cleansing his hands, and I assume he probably is a meticulous bather.
Many naturopaths and allergy specialists agree with the hygiene hypothesis, which sees the immune system as a giant muscle. It must be exercised routinely or it becomes lethargic. The idea gained confirmation with the outlawing of anti-microbial soap. Testing showed users actually had more illness than those who just used regular soap due to sterilizing the skin and leaving no place for good bugs to live.
As I was reading the New Jersey fellow's story, the thought struck me that in a day of megadata, why isn't someone compiling a profile of every single coronavirus victim? Right now, the media frenzy and official language about the outbreak makes it sound like anyone is at risk. This puts everyone on edge and collapses jobs and causes real hardship. Think about the hot dog vendors at the NCAA basketball games.
We need a laser focus on who is susceptible. I want to know their age, diet, medical situation, marital status, occupation, travel history. In other words, build a profile of victims. In no time, we'd have a clear picture of who's susceptible. That way preventative efforts can be targeted. Rather than causing mass hysteria and disruption of the society, create a check list of these vulnerabilities and if you self-audit above 70 percentile, STAY HOME.
This would not violate privacy statutes because it would all go into a spreadsheet. Such a basic and elementary compilation of data should be simple and it would enable 98 percent of people to go on with life as usual while the vulnerable restrain and receive family and community support for their carefulness.
To just outright ban travel from Europe or ban students from a campus--that's just Henny Penny paranoia. Never have we been more able to track immunological risk as precisely but we're acting like we're in prehistoric times. Has political correctness so permeated our society that the mere thought of profiling susceptibilities is now off limits? Come on, let's use our scientific and technological prowess to zero in on this thing with minimal disruption.
The only thing worse than doing nothing is unnecessarily destroying businesses and jobs due to over-reaction and hyper-sensitivity to offense. Once we build this profile, we'll quickly get a good sense of what decreases immunity. Maybe it's Cheerios for breakfast, being a Democrat, getting less than 8 hours of sleep at night, having a college degree, and having no kids, logging 50,000 air miles a year and being over 60 years old. I have no idea. But aren't you curious what the commonalities would be? Doesn't it seem reasonable to find out?
Quickly you create a checklist, put it online, and everybody can self-test for susceptibility. Everybody else, stay away from the things on that checklist, and go about your daily life.
During the Bubonic Plague, the culprit was only found when a fellow decided to build a profile around people who died. That lead to lice and mice. As long as everyone thought it was ghosts and goblins and tried to prevent it with hexes over the door, the black death continued. Right now it seems like we're reverting to a superstitious culture; let's use mega-data to zero in on it and fix it. And then let's encourage a national effort to move away from as many of the vulnerabilities as possible. Is that too ridiculous?
Right now numerous reports are swirling around that high doses of Vitamin C and some swigs of Elberberry juice knock out coronavirus. For years I've taken Vitamin C supplementation. I eat a lot of dirt and stick my hands in cow poop and chicken guts. I drink out of cow water troughs right alongside the calves. The nordic countries have confirmed that barn-raised infants have much healthier immune systems than their more sterile cousins in the city. I'd love to know if anyone who has gotten the coronavirus routinely visits farms. I'll bet they don't.
What do you think boosts an immune system?
PS: Remember, folks, if you like these posts and think more people should engage in this conversation, send it on. Thank you. Someday I'd like as many people to care about these lunatic conversations as currently care about what Kim Kardashian says.