The Questions You Should be Asking About Covid-2 Infections
Eleven people, about the same age, get into a lift. One person has Covid-2 and is infectious—and they sneeze a few times. Each person inhales millions of virus over the next three minutes before they exit the lift and go about their business. What happens to these ten people over the next week or so?
Interestingly, five don’t experience any symptoms although they inhaled just as many virus as the others. The other five have come down with initial ‘cold’ symptoms of a runny nose and feel unusually cold at times—which progress to further symptoms of mild tiredness, mild headache, feeling colder than normal with occasional flushing. Two others experience a reduced sense of smell. However these mild symptoms are not enough to stop them going about their everyday activities.
Three of these people have some basic knowledge on ways to treat their developing ‘cold’ symptoms—and decide to take extra vitamin C, D, zinc and magnesium each day. Two of these three people have in their medicine chest herbs to broadly treat respiratory virus infections—they immediately start taking these on experiencing the early symptoms. All three, for different reasons, get to bed early each night over the next week, take analgesics, don’t over exert and don’t eat fast foods (high carbohydrate)—one does intermittent fasting. There is no real stress in their lives during this time and all regain normal health over the next week.
The remaining two are not so lucky. They are insistent on maintaining their current lifestyle (for whatever reasons). After the initial symptoms they develop a cough, sore throat, aches and pains, eventually diarrhoea and tiredness. For them now, this is more than a general cold virus infection. They both stop work with reluctance and stay at home.
Over the next few days one person slowly recovers due to being intensely nursed by their family—they were put to bed. They felt so poorly that they didn’t want to eat and were supported with broths. They were given cough mixtures, Asprin, eucalyptus rubs and other general support until they fully recovered.
The other person is not in a position to be nursed and does not know what to do. They go to their doctor who prescribes antibiotics and tells them to stay at home. They try to push through the infection by doing normal things—taking drugs for the pains, eating convenient fast foods, watching TV/computer, not sleeping and they try to do work from home. Their symptoms worsen and they develop a real inability to breath, have chest pain, get weaker and find they have difficulty moving. They phone for an ambulance and are taken to hospital where the doctors treat them with a combination of antiviral drugs, steroids and analgesics—to overcome their now life-threatening infection.
Two questions need to be asked:
- Why didn’t five of these people experience any signs of sickness?
- Why did one person nearly die?
The answer is linked to the degree of competency of each of their immune systems at the time they contracted the pathogen. During and following their initial infection the immune systems of five of these people were able to mount a very quick, robust and focused response—which isolated and contained the pathogen population. This was mostly due to the healthy lifestyle that they followed. The other five had immune systems that were not behaving competently during this time of their lives—mostly because of their lifestyle and attitude to their lives.
Immune systems are never 100% competent all the time. They vary as they continually deal with bacteria, fungi, virus, parasites cancer cells and the myriad of chemicals that enter our bodies each day. A degree of incompetency occurs when an immune system is continually overloaded through lifestyle or endemic infections which slows an initial response to contain a population growth of newly invading pathogens—such as SARS Covid-2. Incompetent immune systems can more easily become exhausted and lose a fight against a virulent pathogen—and this can then initiate chronic disease or even lead to death.
Immune system competency is directed and modulated by autonomic nervous activity (psychoneuroimmunology). Experiencing ongoing emotional stress or a reduced ‘sense of self’ can also limit immune competency.
There can be short term and long term damaging influences. A sudden drop in immune competency can result from a temporary short-term lifestyle influence. For example, this can occur when a combination of life challenges simultaneously occur—such as being involved in an ongoing emotionally stressful situation while getting limited sleep, while at the same time overeating on junk food and being exposed to inclement weather.
There can also be damaging long-term lifestyle influences that in combination, reduce immune system competency—such as being a shift-worker in a toxic chemical factory environment, who continually snacks on fast foods with poor micro-nutrition; while rarely exercising or taking mental time out from the rat-race; is overweight; spends no quality time with self, family or friends; is constantly suffering negative emotions with no abilities to neutralise them nor the poor sense of self they generate; and who is generally purposeless.
The immune system loses competency in two broad ways: immune senescence and immune scarring. Immune senescence is the ageing of the immune system where it slows down in its ability to repair and defend the body—similar to what is observed with older people in their capacity, strength and endurance to undertake manual work. An immune system in senescence is liable to become exhausted more easily. In general immune systems begin the senescence journey from mid to late 30s. Knowing what to do to take more care of your body as you age buffers this.
Immune scarring is the loss of competency related to a specific antigen or group of antigens which cause allergies (five types including autoimmune diseases) and cancers, or allows endemic pathogens (such as gut flora) to survive and disrupt body health by initiating immune acclimatisation and specific communication breakdown between immune cells—molecular mimicry or cross-reactivity. This can occur at any time of life.
If you support and protect your immune system through an optimal lifestyle, specific self-therapy and natural medicines, you will have a greater ability to maintain normal health even when pathogens such as Covid-2 attempt to infect your body. You will also have more of a chance to age gracefully.
Some lifestyle factors that reduce immune competency are:
- Lack of comprehensive exercise; smoking; excessive alcohol consumption; poor diet of processed foods, high carbohydrate and refined grains, biologically active toxins in foods; and sleep deprivation.
- Taking pharmaceutical drugs to treat symptoms (also taking street drugs).
- Constant exposure to biotoxins from moulds, bacteria, parasites or industrial/commercial chemicals.
- Over exposure to endocrine disruptors (radiation and Wi-Fi), heavy metals, nano-particles, plastics.
- Psychosocial factors that cause emotional stress and poor sense of self.
- Inappropriate vaccinations.
However just being aware of these influences may not be enough to stop immune scarring, immune exhaustion and immune acclimatisation. There are more focused and effective natural ways to maintain high immune competency as well as slow immune senescence as you age—to give you a longer life with better health.