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Besmellah Al Rahman Al Raheem
Alternative theory of Infection Control
What am I about to explain does not reflect the opinion of my Country, its health ministry, or the health institute that I am currently working at,
It’s just my personal theories based on my research on infectious disease and the corona disaster since it started in china. So please bear with me. And correct me if I am mistaken.
Part 1. The disease management:
The disease has spread, mo doubt in that, whatever the means were, it has spread so quickly all over the world,
Nobody is yet sure how it did, they said it can live in air from 8 to 30 minutes, they said it can live in cardboards and on surfaces for 3 days, they said it can spread from person to person from 1 meter up to 8 meters, they also said that 25 percent of the population are asymptomatic, and then they said that maybe half the population are asymptomatic.. And that they may be only guessing at this point...
If that was all true, if this describes the infection of the corona correctly, even if remotely, then this means we are done for! It means we already have lost the battle! No amount of hand washing, face masking, social distancing, self isolation or quarantine well be enough to ward off the disease!! Because it’s been spreading for 3 months now, with these near mythical characteristics!! 3 months of spreading of a virus that can leap 8 meters, live half an hour suspended in the air, live 3 days on surfaces, and candidly be asymptomatic in HALF the infected population! And a virus is TINY! Can only be seen by electron microscope, it is smaller than a grain of dust, and we all who live in the desert have seen how dust particles can enter from the smallest openings in your house no matter how you seal it.. So how about a smaller, living organism?
Now, my intension is not to cause panic or lose hope, but is to find an alternative way to combat such a beast.
Because it’s a shame on us, such advanced civilization with centuries of scientific discoveries and technological advances, it’s a shame on us after all this that our only strategy so far when we were faced with a plague, is self isolation! Is That’s it? Don’t talk to anyone, don’t touch anything? Please stand by for potential resolve?
A lion, a beast has entered your household, and when asked what to do about it , all you come up with is: don’t breath don’t talk.. Just let me think about it..? While the beast proceeds to devour your house members and loved ones in front of you.. Do we escape? Do we look for other means to protect ourselves? No. just set in your place and don’t move until I come up with a plan, or until the lion dies of old age..
I apologize again for the grim picture, but it had to be put into prospective.. So back to scientific talk:
I have noticed that isolation (whether self implied or enforced) and the intensity of the disease has some sort of seatbelt/force relationship; the more you tighten the isolation, the more intense the disease gets, as seen in case of Italy, Spain, and now the United states. And you should not use just one example in the world (china) as a successful strategy of combat or a role model.
So what could be the possible cause of this seatbelt/force phenomena?
Ever heard of Nosocomial infections? Hospital acquired illnesses and hospital acquired pneumonia? These are disease caused by prolonged stay at the hospitals and they are very common especially among the old, the weak and the immuno-compramized.
Have you ever worn an N95 mask and tried to manage a patient? The mask itself is so tight, restricting, panic inducing and has an awful smell of impending doom! This mask already used to cause deficient patient handling due to its inconvenient properties, so imagine this mask, coupled with layers of gown, gloves boots and goggles, topped with the immense fear by the health worker himself that he might contract the fatal disease.. Will his performance and management of critical corona patient be 100 percent? Will he give him mouth to mouth if the situation called for it and no Ambo bag was available? A situation that could be common now with the world deficiency of health supplies..
Maybe that is one of the causes of high death rate in a disease with such high mild cases and recovery rate??
Maybe if we focus our efforts and resources on only treating and managing critical cases. Instead of wasting it on diagnosis of mild cases, on quarantine, on enforcing isolation, and instead of wasting millions upon millions on face masks, gloves, sanitizers and other protective equipments? Maybe if we do that we save some more lives?
Maybe the disease does not have a cure , but the symptoms can be managed, God willing,, by good relaxed sufficient medical care, and do not forget the high recovery rate!
It became like we are playing soccer, but instead of protecting our Goal, we are trying to catch every single player of the apposing team, interrogating them, not believing them and then arrest them! Instead of just protecting our goal from the big visible single soccer ball!!
The virus is small, it’s tiny! It’s literally invisible! And there are millions of it! And we have no drug that can kill it yet!
But we know as health workers how to deal with critical patients. How to manage symptoms. Or at least to give a dying person a painless, dignified death..
On another note, did you know that the major causes of deaths during the Spanish flu –the previous big pandemic- was due to super-infections, overcrowding of patients at hospitals and malnourishment (something that we might be heading towards with the increase of unemployment with the isolation and the decease of business and world resources)?? Did you know that it was speculated that might have caused more death tall than the virus itself?
So how about us now, with self isolation and quarantine and everybody wearing protective equipments in the streets and stores?
Isn’t isolation a bigger risk of other household infections? Staying in a closed unventilated environment for extended periods of time, keeping household members in close quarters for forever will cause infections other than corona between them, especially the elderly and the young who will not be exposed to sun light and vitamin D, but will only be exposed to all kinds of microbes that live in nooks and crannies and moisture, not everybody is a wealthy obsessive health goer living in a wide mansion or 5 star service,
Let alone moisture left on hands on surfaces after the sanitizing alcohol have evaporated, the preservatives material In these sanitizers and their long term harm on our bodies, let alone the possible carcinogenic materials from other chemicals used to sanitize industrial or larger surface areas..
Non- health workers who are using weathered gloves handling grocery items and foods, normal civilians using gloves in all daily activities touching everything from door handles to fresh fruits, carrying disease other than corona in these old used gloves and not caring for personal hygiene as these gloves are not sanitized regularly as if they were their own hands and are only supposedly protecting the wearer himself, what about these overused masks worn by everyone? Hmm? Full of personal germs with newly nesting microorganisms in its moist folds?? Do these masks and gloves protect you from touching your mobile phone and scratching your infected hair? Does sneezing in your sleeve or shoulder protect your children when you go home and hug them –after you washed your hands for 40 seconds?- are we not allowed to touch our own children at home? Or should we wear full surgical scrubs and gowns when we try to help our elderly to the bathroom at home?
This explains my theory, maybe a bit asymmetrically, but I hope you get the idea..
So, the suggested solution in short:
- Concentrate all efforts on critical cases only, discard diagnosis and quarantine, the disease has already spread, and its only a matter of time before it reaches near you.. and if it does, or already did.. then just keep calm, stay level headed, and remember that panic will only cause a bigger disaster. Reserve hospitals health workers and funding for critical cases only. Because the disease had high recovery rate, and high percentage of mild cases.
- Make people aware of the dangers or cold air conditioning and drinking cold drinks, explain how does that lowers the immunity and invite corona and any of its friend right into your respiratory system! This is critical now at the time of weather changes to warm and most of the population being at home.
- Let people get out, at all times! Breathe fresh air and get some natural immunity! Instead of risking other diseases at home and close spaces or restricting gathering at markets and other essential places to a specific short time that might boost the spread of the disease. And never forget that psychology plays its part in the human immune system, unhappy people are people very vulnerable to illness.
- And lastly, plead to your governments and officials, ask for permission to go to mosques to pray and plead to the one God to remove this calamity from the world and spare us and our children, in the past few weeks we lost the benefit of collective prayers of Juma prayers at the most blessed day of the week, now Ramadan is very close by and we will be losing our collective prayers at the most blessed nights of the year! For centuries we’ve been praying for each other and for countries with calamities, it’s the most wise decision now to join prayers as this plague has reached every city in the world! With no known treatment or a clear end in sight!
One final note:
Google the word (Miasma)
It’s the old theory of infection 200 years ago, before the new theory of infection diseases emerged..
Could this pandemic, just this time, be some sort of Miasma? Can we discover a new theory that joins the old Miasma theory with the new infectious diseases theory, leading us into a new world of knowledge and a future with even more advanced medical breakthroughs?
Thank you very much. Please feel free to discuss my material.