The Moral Dog’s Owner is a Doctor so the usual provisos that her Opinions are hers only do come tweaked with Medical Knowledge gleaned over three decades and a swine flu pandemic.

The Owner is expecting imminent Covid because of close contact. So apologies for hijacking the Moral Dog’s blog but:

How to defend ourselves against Covid

Covid is a new bug for mankind, and like most new bugs that affect us , it jumped to people from animals. Many human diseases jumped from animals, including measles, the bubonic plague, HIV, ebola, influenza and the common cold.

In the modern world we have four defences against new infections:

1. Our Own immune systems. Number one in every way, these are brilliant as we have been developing them for hundreds of thousands of years. They are why we don’t die from every cold or infected insect bite. They have defended the world’s population, as a whole, against plagues and pestilence since long before we had antibiotics and science. They defend us, much of the time, against cancers. They consist of millions of cells primed to recognise pathogens, neutralise them and remember them for the future.
2. Immunisation. This piggybacks onto number one. Immunisations merely give our own immune systems advance warning of what may be coming, so that we can prepare. Immunisation is probably medicine’s greatest gift to the world. It has nearly eradicated polio. It eradicated smallpox. It protects against measles, which I and my friends all had in the pre vaccine era (some of us died). It protects against rubella. It protects against meningococcal disease, which was something we all expected to see when I was a junior doctor and now see rarely in the UK. Immunisation is a fabulous public health advance. It is imperfect, as not all immunisations are 100% effective, but it also helps with herd immunity (see below). However for Covid-19 we don’t have a vaccine yet, and if we develop one it won’t be for some time. So we can’t bank on that yet, at least.
3. Antibiotics and antivirals. These have saved us from many overwhelming bacterial illnesses and a few viral ones. We don’t have one fr Covid-19 yet, although the search is on, and again we can’t bank on it. We don’t have nearly the range of effective antivirals as we have antibacterials. But it is being worked on, as we need it for those whose immune systems can’t do the job themselves.
4. Healthy Group Immunity. Herd immunity has been much discussed – it means group immunity. It means that if most of a population are immune to a virus, the virus cannot circulate in the population, so those who are not immune to it won’t get it. It means that as a population we use our immune systems to kill the virus so that those whose immune systems are not up to the job don’t need to. Healthy Group immunity allows protection of the vulnerable by the immunity that the healthy majority acquire. A population acquires this kind of immunity either because they have been vaccinated or because they have had the infection. If we want to use Healthy Group Immunity to protect the vulnerable, however, we cannot just let the virus sweep through us all. We need to understand who is vulnerable and keep the virus away from them. This approach only protects the vulnerable if the ‘healthy herd’ who catch the infection are safe. Yet they are not totally  safe. If 60% of all of us, across the board, young and old, have Covid then at least 1% will die. However, if the strongest 60% of us have Covid, the figure could be very very much lower than that. However, it will still not be zero. Some Healthy People do become very sick. A very small proportion die, even with the best care. For this reason Healthy Group Immunity is not a perfect strategy. It would be better to have stopped the virus in its tracks. It would be better to have a vaccine, a treatment or, preferably both. It would be better if the virus had not come. But with the virus still spreading and no vaccine imminent, it may be that the best we can do is to slow it down, protect those most likely to die, and do the best we can to ensure that those least likely to die have access to the best the NHS can do.

What is flattering the curve?

It would be better for our population that the virus spreads at medium speed through April and May than at fast speed through March. This would mean that :

1. the numbers affected at any one time is less
2. we won’t all be off work at once.
3. we may buy time to learn more about possible treatments
4. the outbreak would be in the spring and summer, when hospital beds are less full.
5. we will have enough intensive care beds for the critically ill, so that those with a chance of surviving all get that chance

Why is everyone so frightened?

Older people, whom we love, are at risk. Front line medical staff, who may get a very high level of exposure to multiple patients with the virus, may have worse infections. And, in a horrible lottery we don’t understand, an unknown percentage of other, younger people are at risk. So we need to protect them.

The best way to do that seems to be by a massive community effort to contain the virus as far as we can, and allowing only those in the healthy group to expose themselves to it by doing essential work. It looks as if the virus will still spread, but we may have some control over where it spreads, and how fast it gets there.

If we do this then there is a good chance that those who have had it will be permanently immune, and those who are not immune but would be at risk won’t have it. The best method we have to stop the pandemic is ourselves.

Our job is to look out for each other, to be socially responsible, to work together and to save the people we can save. For some of us that is going to mean having Covid. Please don’t panic. Only a small percentage of the normally well will need a doctor. And if you do, we will be there for you.

Categories: coronavirus Covid-19

Tagged as: coronavirus Covid-19

Hergest the Hound

I am a dog of many thoughts.