…and here is a compelling discussion of the whole affair from an unusual source published today on Mercola’s website. Much of this is not only believable but plausible if not likely. Many of these statements are consistent with the behavior of the illness thus far — the unusual contagious nature, the combination of the respiratory and gastrointestinal mucosal areas of infection, and the inflammatory “cytokine storm” it creates that can penetrate and lead to sepsis. The combination of the infectivity and survival in air and droplets — properties from the common cold virus — alongside the inflammatory grenade it represents once it starts replicating in the respiratory AND GI tissues –likely engineered from the influenzae viruses — make it indeed quite dangerous to people given to such “inflammatory overreactions”. Who might they be? Not children and slightly older youth. But rather mature, robust individuals who do not have good inflammatory “resilience” — those with autoimmune diseases, eg, and particularly in those people with low vitamin D levels. Other elements conferring fertile systems for viral replication and severe oxidative and inflammatory stress would be people with poor selenium, vitamin A, and zinc nutrition. There are a number of other cofactors that would make adults more ill than they would otherwise be with this virus, and it would be hoped that one’s local physician brain trust would be well prepared to outline such things.
On the other hand I am a bit concerned on the overestimation of morbidity and mortality here. The way deaths and hospitalizations are being measured leads me to believe that there are a large number of completely uncounted individuals out there with mild to no symptoms who will never be part of the “denominator”. This means that a “3% mortality rate” that is being promoted by many media outlets because of the fear factor is likely far less than 1%. It may take a while for this blow over, but I don’t think that it’s nearly as lethal as advertised. Also, those who have unfortunately succumbed to this illness – whatever it turns out to be – most definitely have not had anyone measure vitamin D levels, look at mineral nutrition, etc. All of these are cofactors in terms of just how sick one might get.
Interestingly, homeopathy might wind up being one of the better weapons here just as it was during the devastating 1918 flu pandemic. Non MDs practicing homeopathy reported a much lower morbidity and mortality than conventional care at that time. Precious little has been researched, some evidence does exist for efficacy. Corona? Remains to be seen.