This Is Real With No Agenda.

It seems to be getting better

It is April 20 th and it seems to be getting better. We have more Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and here on Long Island the surge is beginning to slow down. We still have a ton of patients but there is a feeling that we at least know a little bit more about what is going on. To that end let me clear up a lot of mis-information that I have seen on the internet.

What is a Bacteria and What is a Virus?

Bacteria

Bacteria are very tiny one – celled plants. When I say that they are plants, I mean that they are individual creatures that have basic characteristics of plants. They eat, they release waste, they reproduce, and they have cell walls (the part that gives vegetables their crunch) and they can alter their environment to make it more comfortable for them.

When we get bacterial infections, it means that these little plants set up housekeeping in a part of your body, such as kidneys, lungs, or throat, then they change the environment by changing the ph (to prevent the body from attacking it) that will allow the group of bacteria to reproduce successfully.

These creatures want to live, and they choose your body as a comfy place to live in. If you live or die does not concern them, but their main purpose is to have a comfortable place to live so they don’t tend to kill you right away.

Viruses

A virus is NOT ALIVE. It is a biological machine whose sole purpose is to reproduce. It consists of a piece of messenger RNA (a tiny strand of chemicals that carries instructions on how to build another virus) with an envelope and a way to inject it into a cell.

When the virus injects the mRNA into one of your cells, it hijacks the reproductive mechanisms of YOUR cells to reproduce itself. It truly doesn’t care to set up shop, or to make a comfy place because it is not alive. It will break into your cells, take over the reproductive machinery, overload and use up the cell to make more of itself and then burst the cells to spread more of itself.

In the picture above, the spikes such through your cell membranes (animals don’t have cell walls – we don’t crunch) and that yellow string of mRNA shoots through.

In COVID – 19 (COrona Virus that was ID‘ed in 2019), the pink spikes attach themselves to certain areas in the lung cells and the kidney cells.

The Disease

When the virus enters into your respiratory tract (through droplets that people cough out or even spew out when they talk) these things attach to the cells of the airsacs, take them over, burst them, and the viruses spread out into the air and into the blood. The viruses that go out into the air spread to people via droplets or land on surfaces to be picked up by people’s hands and transported onto someone else’s mucus membranes then into their lungs. The virus that goes into the blood, makes its way to the kidneys, attaches there and begins to destroy the kidneys as well as making its way back to the lungs.

Viruses don’t set up shop, they attack and destroy as soon as possible and they can kill quickly.

How The Body Fights It

The body has two ways that it destroys attackers.

The first way is the “soldiers“. The body has cells called White Blood Cells (WBC) which travel the blood stream looking for foreign bodies (bacteria and such) which they engulf and kill using little blobs of acid they carry inside of them.

In order to get the soldiers to the area needed, the body releases certain chemicals (histamines and cytokines – like hand grenades that destroy anything even healthy cells ) that cause leaky blood vessels and causes swelling. These cytokines and WBC also cause fevers that are designed to kill these invaders. Arguably, the purpose of this system is to immediately attack bacteria, surround them and kill them.

The second way are the “snipers“. These cells get intel on these invaders (every single abnormal thing in the body), and through their own mechanisms create magic bullets (antibodies) that target all or part of any invader, effectively preventing the bad guys from attaching at all. This system is set up to attack viruses as well as bacteria. Remember you can put thousands of viruses on the surface of a bacteria… they are that small. So the snipers attack big as well as tiny things. These snipers DEPEND ON INTEL! In other words these cells MUST HAVE SEEN THE INVADER BEFORE. Covid – 19 is a “Novel” Corona Virus, meaning that humans have NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE. So our snipers (the guys responsible for preventing virus attacks) have no magic bullets.

So, Covid – 19 enters your airways, attaches to your air sac cells, does its thing and within hours begins to reproduce and destroy your air sacs and kidney cells.

So the body does what it knows how to do… it sends the soldiers.

It has no Magic Bullets, so what does it do?

It sends LOTS OF SOLDIERS to the lungs and kidneys, along with the chemicals that cause swelling (histamines) and the hand grenades (the cytokines).

Covid – 19 Disease (called “pneumonia” because that is what it looks like on x-ray but not a traditional pneumonia), has 2 phases: 1) the initial phase in which the lung and kidney cells are destroyed and consists of cough, low oxygen, and kidney failure and 2) the “cytokine storm” in which the body doesn’t know what to do and throws “hand grenades” at the virus and in turn helping to destroy more lung and kidney tissue.

Treatments

Treatments that make sense are those that support the body such as oxygen, Remdisivir (a broad spectrum ant-virus created to combat Ebola) that attacks certain parts of viruses (specific anti-viruses like for AIDS don’t work), plasma (that has the “magic bullets” from people who have survived), and Chemicals that fight the cytokines (IL6 inhibitors) are in place and show good promise.

Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work. Studies have shown that it doesn’t and frankly there is no reason why it should. Zithromax is a nice antibiotic that doesn’t fight a virus. Both of these can cause sudden cardiac death unless prescribed appropriately by a doctor for appropriate reasons. Covid 19 is not it.

Now, aspirin is an anticoagulant that should be used for heart disease. The finding in autopsies that there are micro emboli is to be expected as there is damage to lungs and the clots form as the body tries to heal.

Doctors do use blood thinners during treatment for the prevention of blood clots and there is evidence for using blood thinners to prevent blood clots in the lungs of people who were really sick and survive. But taking high dose aspirin to prevent blood clots may cause you to bleed into your lungs if you are not carefully monitored.

Bottom Line

There is NO CURE.

Only a vaccine will prevent it which is over a year away.

WASH YOUR HANDS or use hand sanitizer.

Cover your face with a mask or scarf when out in public (remember you need to prevent droplets).

Remember no one knows who gets sickest so its not just old people, it can be young people as well.

Use Social distancing (6 ft is the distance droplets go if you cough).