Coronavirus Chronicles — The Sicker Quicker Phase

For a long time, COVID-19 was believed to exclusively haunt older people, especially if they were overweight. Last summer, around 97% of all COVID-hospitalized patients were unvaxxed, and large segments of society were acting as if the danger had passed and everything should be wide open. Then, “youngification” began to set in.

In early August of 2021, the death of a 28-year-old was noteworthy. The ICU admission of an 18-year-old was news. A 33-year-old bodybuilder was astonished to learn that he was infected. The spotlight turned on the diagnosed young, especially if they were unvaccinated. In all fairness, older and more vulnerable people had been prioritized for shots. It was not until months later that personal responsibility became such a factor.

As “younger, sicker, quicker” became a slogan among medical personnel, the Delta variant was blamed. Some professionals were saying it felt like an entirely different disease. Health care institutions, colleges, and some other places started to get serious about requiring that participants be immunized. Now, with the notorious Omicron strain active, those days seem quaintly old-fashioned.

Summer of disbelief

In early August, yet another super-fit man in his early 40s posthumously made the news. Indeed, this was becoming a common occurrence. John Eyers, described as “an Ironman and keen mountain climber,” refused vaccination and died after being ill with COVID for a month. The wrinkle is, his twin sister, who was vaccinated, remained healthy and lived to mourn him. She told the press, “The only pre-existing health condition he had was the belief in his own immortality. He thought if he contracted COVID he would be OK.” Before being placed on a ventilator, Eyers did say that he wished he had taken the shots.

Another patient put into a medically induced coma and hooked up to a ventilator was the Denver Broncos’ formerly healthy, active coach for fitness and nutrition, Bill Phillips. He had not expected to catch the virus twice. A few months earlier, at 56, he went through a bout of COVID, and assumed that he would be immune, and not need vaccination. Phillips told reporter James Crump that the mistake had nearly cost his life:

When you come this close to death, your entire being deteriorates on every level… you don’t just wake up and go on living your life. I have to rebuild my body, mind, and entire life from the ground up.

This act of standing for a couple seconds, with a lot of support, was definitely harder than a 600 lbs squat and more painful than I can ever describe.

The point is, healthy people catch the disease. Young people catch it. It is caught by people who are both young and healthy. Nobody can afford to take anything for granted. The financial aspect alone is horrifying. If we thought student loan debt was onerous, wait till we see the bills for youthful coronavirus.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Is the Delta Variant Making Younger Adults ‘Sicker, Quicker’?,” NYTimes.com, 08/03/21
Source: “‘Super fit’ twin dies of COVID aged 42 in UK after refusing vaccine…,” 7news.com.au, 08/05/21
Source: “Former Broncos Coach Lost 70 Pounds, Made ‘Mistake’ Not Getting Vaccinated,” Newsweek.com, 08/25/21
Image by UNDP Ukraine/CC BY-ND 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — COVID-19 and Kids, the Volume Increases

It is all well and good to talk about trusting science, but first, we have to be aware of it. Even the pre-print online press is unable to keep pace with the enormous number of studies, and theoretical speculations, concerning the virus. Two trends seem to be emerging. One is that the virus may be responsible for a lot more illnesses than was previously suspected.

As an example, Dr. Farid Jalali strongly recommends accepting the evidence that “acute COVID19 is — at its core — a severe autoimmune platelet activating disorder.” This is important because then, many of the hospitalizations that are categorized as “with COVID” — like heart attacks, strokes, lung clots, and other malfunctions — become clearly seen as actually “for” COVID. In other words, it seems like many conditions that have been considered as co-morbidities are not separate entities at all, but integral parts of COVID-19.

Another medical professional points out how people are being called “asymptomatic” just because they have no cough or fever, when actually they have quite a few different symptoms which should be recognized. Someone else notes that a lot of patients have been sent home with no early intervention, only to return to the ER with life-threatening problems.

A big bump

Another change is, all of a sudden, there is a lot more talk about the combined topic of children plus COVID-19. Pediatric COVID is a new, small field, and nurses and doctors share their firsthand experiences by way of social media. They want to speak now about what might save a life tomorrow, and that is understandable.

The basis of every medical advance is anecdotal evidence. A knowledgeable person notices an anomaly; gets curious; asks around to see if anybody else has clocked the discrepancy. For example, what if a breastfeeding mother is vaccinated against COVID, and almost immediately, both she and the baby have breathing problems? People wonder how to think about that. Is it an isolated incident, whose cause is not yet understood? Or is it a trend, a warning that should immediately be addressed with legislation?

You can’t Google it, because the information just isn’t out there yet. Maybe not enough lactating moms have been vaccinated, to make a statistical difference. And even if a question is deemed important, every research project needs resources, funding, willing and qualified participants, and so forth. Given all that, it still might be a year or longer before anything is published that addresses your question.

Crowdsourcing

So why not ask your college roommate, who now runs a department at a major clinic, if she has seen this particular problem? Does she know of any person in academia who hopes to find or assemble a group of recently vaccinated nursing mothers? In fact, why not expand the inquiry and ask around on Twitter? Plenty of doctors, nurses, therapists, and technicians readily share their observations, reservations, and perturbations.

Some people get sarcastic. Some point out that schools have been known as super-spreader locations since forever; as places rife with contagion, where something is always “going around.” And yet, the most obvious and sensible precautions against COVID have not been taken.

Cory Doctorow, who has an illustrious reputation in several fields, has been writing about a difference of opinion with his child’s school:

They’ve upgraded their filters, but refuse to open the windows. Every one of my kid’s classes has one or more kids who won’t mask. Every day, we get notifications of double-digit new cases.

Filters are great! But they only work if the maskless plague-carrier next to my kid exhales his infectious exhaust-plume into the filter before it reaches my kid. Open windows create high-turbulence airflows that would improve her chances even if she’s downwind of a maskless kid.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: Farid Jalali, M.D. (@farid__jalali) on Twitter, 01/19/22
Source: Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) on Twitter, 01/21/22
Image by Travis Wise/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Many Faces of Fat

Yesterday’s post ended with a quotation from Dr. David Kass, who succinctly states that if a person is very obese, fat is their body’s single biggest organ. Wait, it’s what? An organ? Do we mean that fat is not just an inert mass of goop? Exactly. Fat has agency; it does things. Fat might even be said to have an agenda — one in direct opposition to the plans of the brain and other body parts. For instance, fat apparently is willing to provide a haven where coronavirus can safely conceal itself. But what has it been doing previously, all these years?

That answer depends on what kind of fat is being discussed, and the condition of the body it resides in. A Healthline article breaks down the particulars. White fat stores energy, and also tells estrogen, leptin, insulin, cortisol, and growth hormone how to perform. Some of it is absolutely necessary, but too much of it can do a lot of damage in the ways we hear so many warnings about — type 2 diabetes, hypertension, disease of coronary arteries, kidneys, liver, and more.

Brown fat is found mainly in babies, and burns fatty acids to keep them warm. If weight-control scientists could find a way to increase this in adults, they would be happy. Beige (or brite) fat seems to also have that beneficial effect. Essential fat is found in places like the brain and the membranes that protect organs, and women need more of it than men do. It…

[…] plays a major role in hormone regulation, including the hormones that control fertility, vitamin absorption, and temperature regulation.

Subcutaneous fat, the kind that mainly shows, is under the skin. A properly trained person, taking caliper measurements in certain locations, can form a pretty accurate assessment of a body’s total fat percentage.

Visceral (or belly) fat is the worst, and the hardest to get rid of. Entombing its heart, liver, and other internal organs in globs of visceral fat is a terrible thing to do to the body, just an open invitation to every co-morbidity out there. Visceral fat is the body saying “I want to die, come and get me.” If its previous reputation is any indication, visceral fat would be delighted to offer sanctuary to random virus organisms. For Gizmodo, Ed Cara wrote:

[E]vidence from the lab and in patients has suggested that the virus can travel throughout the body and infect other tissues, too, thanks to the receptors it uses to hijack cells. Recently, for instance, scientists found evidence that the coronavirus can readily infect fat and immune cells.

National Institutes of Health researchers “performed complete autopsies on 44 people who had been infected with the coronavirus.” In 39 of those cases, the virus was why they died. In all but five cases, the infection was directly implicated in the person’s death. Evidence of the virus was found throughout the bodies of all the subjects — even if the person had mild symptoms or none. It was found “in the muscle, skin, adipose (fat), and peripheral nervous tissue of 68% of patients.”

The problem that many researchers are concerned with is, how are people still suffering from a disease that gives every sign of being over? “Some experts believe that at least some cases of long covid can be attributed to persistent infection.” Is the body itself still reacting against the memory of a foreign invader? Or is the invader still on the scene, hiding perhaps in fat cells?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Types of Body Fat: Benefits, Dangers, and More,” Halthline.com, 05/24/19
Source: “The Coronavirus Can Persist for Months in Brain, Heart, and Intestines, Major Study Finds,” Gizmodo.com, 12/28/21
Image by Mike Finn/CC BY 2.0