Category: SARS CoV 2

World peace, freedom & human rights reflections

23/8/2021

A couple of days ago I attended a World Peace, Human Rights and Freedom rally in downtown Brisbane. The start was substantially late, so I had plenty of time to observe and ponder.

Today, we are divided into seemingly inconsolable ideological contingents, estranged by different narratives, both carrying their own truth, data and stories. There is significant disagreement on the course of action and even what those actions represent.

In this antagonistic soup, both divisions blame the other for the fall into unethical and immoral behaviour and decisions, having being tripped up by odious and corrupt influencers and organisations. It seems that the antagonism inevitably ends with a familiar and consistent collapse in dialogue.

We are becoming an increasingly contrary society. I experience it on my morning bike rides and I see it on social media. It is blatantly obvious as it currently plays out on our global health stage. I noticed it at the rally.

On an individual level, if you become polarised within yourself, it can be hard to make a decision. You can become stuck in patterns. These patterns may become lifelong: a lifestyle. Expanded to societal scales, a population that can’t commune with itself, has no choice but to tumble with the momentum.

With this unwanted momentum, it’s hard to see the forrest for the trees: to have common objectives, pathways, aspirations and dreams. It’s classic control theory to divide and conquer. Keep the masses confused so that no unifying counterforce can be assembled. Small problems eventually, seemingly, become too big to fathom and nothing reaches resolution. In the end, we are faced with confusion, inertia, and impotence in the manner of our current challenges.

The problem with arguments, is that the dispute distracts focus from the real source of the issue: symptoms and not causes. If you had a headache, contention about whether the best choice is to take an aspirin or have a sleep takes away from the real issue — the cause.

Ok. Maybe that’s fine if your headache is intractable? But is that what we are talking about here? Are our current health issues untreatable? Do we have NO other options? Almost certainly, this virus will be around forever, in one form or another. However, if viral history is any sort of teacher, then we will understand that humans didn’t survive and thrive this long without developing an amazing, adaptable immune system and that viruses will generally mutate to ensure their survival, which ultimately means the survival of their host.

In the meantime, don’t let the symptomatic treatment diminish the desire to tackle the real issues, otherwise we will still be here in the years to come.

If we limit the discourse to two extremes of action — either / or — then we run the risk of wholly implacable solutions. As a populous, we will be faced with two completely objectionable options. Because each option is objectionable, each supporter base will objectionable. This will then further bury the root issues and causes.

How this issue has been portrayed in the media and in politics agitates our health concerns. It has split the population and diverts notice from the genuine platform of cause.

This diversion and oppositional stance draws our attention and comprehension from the intimate workings of the human body. This is where the real discourse should exist. It also shows me how to find my place between poles.

The body does not work according to single, narrow interventions. Science reduces our view to that which is measurable, necessitating elimination of all other variables, so that a particular unit / drug / vaccine can be studied. However, the body doesn’t work that way. The body is a delicate web of interconnected systems and there are always, always checks and balances to be made when the status quo is changed. This necessitates an integrated and systematic evaluation and intervention process. As a polarised society, like most arguments, we are participating in the wrong debate here. The distractions divert us from need-to-know facts and alternative options.

Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/).

Simply put, relativistic thinking is the belief that reality is relative, depending on the adopted perspective.

I find this to be true today. Peoples opinions are defined by their personal experience. One’s view of our current plight will most likely be different if they have lost a business or can’t pay a mortgage compared to someone who doesn’t feel the need to leave home much or who may be financially stable. It will be different if they’ve lost a loved one to an illness or virus compared to someone who has seen their child suffer a vaccine injury. Until recently, some from the bush who have been relatively ambivalent and unaffected by lockdowns have changed their views once restrictions hit their area.

Relativistic thinking contributes its part to polarisation in today’s society.

The problem is, we are progressively encouraged to participate in divisive narratives. As a result, we become fodder for exploitation and it dams the flow for any democratic impetus for us as a whole, to launch coherent and necessary change. There are great forces of power in today’s society, both seen and unseen, that guide our narrative. How can we be organised and relevant enough to stand for ourselves when needed if we are combative over ‘symptomatic’ and misleading issues?

A people in conflict with itself cannot move ahead.

It is entirely plausible that economic and political extremism is THE most important hurdle to community and planetary health today.

There is no easy solution here, but we must begin somewhere and somehow. This view to segregation has become engrained. It is getting worse and it has seeped into the deep spaces. To heal, we must reach the deep places. The best advice I have heard to undo the mental inclination to polarise is to share and listen to our stories that deconstruct the antagonism. This is in part, why the Paragon Health Wellness Wall facebook page was started.

We absolutely must make headroom, legroom and elbow room for relativistic thinking and intricacy and entanglements. They are life. Room must exist for non-polarising alternatives.

Can we notice the deep motivations within ourselves that polarise?

Be well.

Is this the most important question of our time?

1/3/2021

Last week, the rollout of the SARS CoVid-2 vaccines began in Australia. Australia’s Prime Minister was amongst the first 20 to have the vaccine, calling it ‘a curtain raiser’ of what’s to come. Have you read the Vaccine program and bought your tickets yet?

There are many questions yet to be answered, and not just about the vaccine itself. The arguments for and against vaccination in the generalist sense are but one part in this play of many acts. Having paid our money, we should be wary of leaving after the first scene being told we have appreciated the whole drama.

If this play had been written 70 years ago, it may have been purely for the refreshment of its audience. Today, so many writers have had their contribution: medical, scientific, political, economic, government, and private enterprise and billionaires. So much so, that many have written themselves in as the main actors.

We live in times where we have been asked to accept the narrative, no questions asked. But the narrative is so complicated, nuanced and shrouded behind curtains of complicated, and often times, false and misleading data. Unless we are prepared to go to source information, to use scientific discernment of intricate and available research, follow the money trail and uncover the conflicts of interests and unethical and amoral actions of some of the players (which are a matter of public record), most of us will be content with the narrative in our play programs.

We have chosen to read this program because it doesn’t contain any questions and is only a few paragraphs of synopsis. There is a play next door that has a program with many questions, and has many thousands of pages of information about the performance and will take hundreds of hours to read. This play has very few patrons. Who will rise above human nature and who will invest the time and energy it takes to see it? The first play is relying on that to succeed.

This is a difficult piece to write when trying to focus solely on health aspects, for to understand why we must be asking questions it is necessary to appreciate the political and commercial aspects woven with the hegemonising, racketeering and whip handed approaches to this situation over a period of decades. To accept the current narrative is to consign, not just the autonomy over our own health, but our general freedoms to the shrinking pile of liberties. This is not who we are in this country.

The curtain must be drawn back and the wider stage appreciated here if we are to appreciate why this vaccine is not all about our health. It is not in the scope of this current article to elucidate further, but I would encourage you to spend 2 1/2 hours watching the following video:

Data Disaster: A Call for an Investigation Into the CDC’s Conduct During COVID-19

What kind of questions are pertinent to ask? To set the stage, they are not based around the historical story of ’to vaccinate or not to vaccinate’. They are based around the story of this particular vaccination. What is it? Is it safe? Has it undergone the necessary scientific rigour during testing? Is is designed to stop SARS CoVid 2 (CoVid19)? Is the Corona Virus data reliable? Is there a need to take it? How much of a threat is this particular virus? Are there any other alternatives? What does it mean for you if elderly and not in your 30’s? What does it mean for your newborn?

For example, the editorial in the British Medical Journal October 2020 was titled:

Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us.

In the article, it was said:

The world has bet the farm on vaccines as the solution to the pandemic, but the trials are not focused on answering the questions many might assume they are. But what will it mean exactly when a vaccine is declared “effective”? To the public this seems fairly obvious. “The primary goal of a covid-19 vaccine is to keep people from getting very sick and dying,” a National Public Radio broadcast said bluntly.

And, ...

Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said, “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things . . . first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”

Then, ...

Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either. None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.

People have the right to form their own opinion about vaccines, both for and against. This is a premise from the medical fraternity itself who base their tenets on the work on Beauchamp and Childress who created the foundation of modern day bioethics. One of its four principles includes autonomy and enunciates: Autonomy requires the ability to decide for the self, free from control of the others, and with sufficient level of understanding so as to arrive at a meaningful choice. A person should have the capacity to decide upon a course of action, and to put that plan into action.

How then to reconcile the needs of the few with the many? In the case of SARS CoVid 2, which groups constitute the few, and which, the many? In the USA, one of the apparently hardest hit countries, the recovery rate (as of February 16, 2021) in the 0-64 age categories is 99.623%. In light of this does the virus necessitate mandatory or wide coverage vaccination?

Another of the four principles of bioethics details the notion of informed consent. If you are to undertake a procedure, you must do so in full knowledge of its possibilities and probabilities, potentials and pitfalls. Has this knowledge been disseminated, transparent and freely available, as it should? Are we even seeking it out?

What about the mortality rate? Taken at face value, the figures would suggest SARS CoVid 2 is more deadly than the flu. Staying with the USA, at the time of writing, the death toll is 498,993 according the the CDC. When you total the number of deaths against the number of positive cases (just shy of 28 million), it averages 1.73% of cases die with the virus.

At the start of the pandemic, the CDC changed the way it reported deaths with respect to corona virus. Why it did this ONLY for corona virus is a curious question? In short, if you die with the corona virus, despite several other co-morbid conditions, your cause of death is listed as the virus. Can it be proven that you died OF corona virus? No. Only that you died with it.

If the figures are tabulated according to the previous cause of death criteria, which seemed to serve fine for the previous 17 years, it turns out that corona virus deaths in the USA are 16.7 times LESS than today’s figures. This means the total death figure is closer to 29,880 unfortunate people.

How does this compare to the flu related deaths in the USA? During the 2019-2020 influenza season, CDC estimates that influenza was associated with 38 million illnesses, 18 million medical visits, 405,000 hospitalisations, and 22,000 deaths. These numbers are likely to grow. The CDC reports that results are still tabulated up to 2 years after the event.

Also note the overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million influenza-associated medical visits, 810,000 influenza-related hospitalisations, and 61,000 influenza-associated deaths.

Based on these numbers, how much of an emergency is SARS CoVid 2? It is because of this narrative that testing and trials have been pushed though at an alarming rate. On average, it would normally take 12 years to move a drug through trials to your bathroom cabinet. Ordinarily, 5 in 5000 drugs make it through approval to the first round of testing and only 1 in 5000 progresses to manufacture. The number approved drugs that are removed from use within the first few years is also alarming.

Normally, preclinical testing by the drug company is done on animals and in the lab to prove the drug works against the disease. It’s evaluated for safety and at no point is given to a human being. This phase takes typically takes 3 1/2 years.

Phase III trials are where the majority of adverse event testing is usually done, with questions based on side effects noticed in phase I and II trials. Generally, this takes around 3 years.

To date, there are nine vaccines being marketed having pushed through 6 stages of trials in the last 9-12 months. Questions need to be asked and answers with transparency must be given. The onus is now on us to do this because it is not being offered by the makers of the vaccines. Data is short and there have been NO independent tests of the procedures and outcomes by other, non-pharma company researchers. This is a normal requirement.

In short, we don’t know the medium to long term ramifications of these vaccines. According to rigorous scientific principles, claims made by pharmaceutical companies and governments (let alone owners of computer companies and social media outlets) about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines are not yet supported by empirical evidence. It is required of pharma companies and governments to do this. There is such a thing as duty of care and this can only be achieved if the vaccines are proven not to cause harm to the populous before they are implemented.

On the face of it, safety with these vaccines is presumed. It is not good enough to produce a retrospective study years down the track to assess and study safety after the fact. There is such a thing as the precautionary principle that places burden of proof on the makers and authorities rather than on the general public.

When proof of non-harm is placed upon the wider public, it is or can be used to protect the inherent interests of the pharmaceutical companies and those invested in vaccine development, rather than the people.

The takeaway message here is the underlying narrative of this situation and how it speaks to our health liberties now and in the future. In many ways the mainstream medical options are becoming narrower and more tightly controlled than ever before. There is some evidence to suggest the narrative it not what we have been told. As I alluded to in my last newsletter, we haven’t been talking enough about the general state of health in the world today as a springboard for CoVid-19 and many other wellness issues. There are things that everyone can do on the ground, now, today, naturally to promote health and avoid taking yet more medication and promote a highly effective immune system. There is more discussion to be had.

Be well.

Covid-19 Data: A depth dive

1/3/2021

In a recent paper titled COVID-19 Vaccine Frontrunners and Their Nanotechnology Design, the authors make the introductory statements:

Moderna reached clinical trials 63 days after their sequence selection. It is striking that an unestablished nanotechnology formulation reached clinical testing almost a full month before established approaches (ie, inactivated and live-attenuated vaccines) entered clinical trials.

And, ...

It is also of note that in previous severe coronavirus outbreaks of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV clinical trials were not reached until 25 and 22 months after the outbreaks began.

And, ...

The improved speed into clinical trials is hopeful, but despite the rapid progress, there are still reasons for concern.

The fact is, vaccine development does not happen overnight. They must be preventative but also risk-free. Most substances are given to unwell patients, but vaccines are dispensed to healthy individuals and so necessitate an extremely high protective promise.

The current SARS CoV 2 vaccines are emergency use drugs and have bypassed usual developmental methodology. It is important to note, because it has previously been shown with other respiratory type viruses (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, RSV and measles) that antibodies produced can intensify disease ferocity via antibody dependant enhancement (this means the infection can get worse or the intensity of the immune response can be overwhelming).

The Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are ‘nanotechnologies’ and these have not been proven before in clinical environments. In fact, this technology (called an mRNA vaccine) has been researched and tested for 30 years but never been approved.

Every virus is contrasting so there isn’t one perfect solution for all infections. Even within this single SARS-CoV 2 virus some hugely infected people are asymptomatic while others become critical. The enormous inconsistency may infer that a vaccine will not deliver consistent or prolonged immunity in all?

The Questions ...

One of the major questions is what type of immune response in needed to guard against the virus?

At this point in time, we don’t know definitively. This should be somewhat of a concern given that we now have two (in Australia) vaccines available designed to produce a response without knowing if it the specific response we need.

In the entire history of vaccines, there has only ever been one that has eradicated a disease: the smallpox vaccine. Some have come close, but eradication is evasive: polio, measles and mumps ...
Respiratory viruses, as the SARS-CoV 2 is, are particularly hard to vaccinate for, despite heavy efforts to manufacture a vaccine. This is partly because the airways and lungs are not an enclosed environment and can’t be protected as can cervical cancer, for example. With respiratory viruses you can be continuously exposed to the infection, in theory.

Most vaccines are delivered by intramuscular injection, and as such, they produce an antibody response that is better developed in the blood (called IgM or IgG responses). The type of protection we need on the mucosal surfaces of the lungs is an IgA response, which is minimal with intramuscular vaccines. At this point in time, there are other vaccines in trials that are looking at improving the IgA response, but this is not the mechanism of the vaccines that are on offer in Australia.

SARS-CoV 2 is different for a respiratory virus because it hitches to a receptor called the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). This receptor is found in almost all organs but particularly on the surfaces of the lungs and the digestive system, along with the brain. Hence, this particular virus damages at sites distal to its entry point. This is why it can have such destructive and broad effects. Predominantly, it hangs around in respiratory, circulatory, nervous and urogenital systems and why it’s responsible for many varied symptoms. Much of the pathology here, outside of the airway, is defended by IgG antibody responses, and this is the target of the vaccines we now have. This is vital to note, because the vaccine is not designed to promote an IgA response, and therefore, it’s not designed to prevent infection or its transmission in the airways.

This is one of the issues that hasn’t been addressed by governments or chief health officers. If the vaccine isn’t designed to prevent positive tests, do we shut down a city or state again when someone tests positive, as they will?

So, what is different about the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines compared to traditional vaccines?

Both rely on nanoparticle technology. These nanoparticles are of the same proportions as the virus. As such, it confers an ability to enter cells as the virus would. Nanoparticles encapsulate the nuclear material (mRNA for Pfizer and DNA for AstraZeneca) and adjuvants for use of the immune system once inside the target cells.

Once inside the nucleus of the cell, the lab formulated genetic material from the virus is incorporated with our genetic material to produce an inert viral protein that our cells recognise as foreign and subsequently mounts an immune response.

Different nanoparticles are available. In the case of Pfizer, they use lipid (fats) nanoparticles (LNPs) and for AstraZeneca, they use another virus (which comes from chimps. It can enter human cells but seems to be inert once inside).

Older types of vaccines would have used actual live or dead virus.

What about the issue of adjuvants?

Adjuvants are immunostimulatory molecules that are designed to annoy the inflammatory and immune systems to hopefully produce a heightened response to vaccine stimulation. The issue here is that many adjuvants have earlier not passed muster due to toxicity pitfalls. In the past, and at times today, the adjuvants in vaccines include molecules like mercury and aluminium. These have no business being in the human body.

Where the Australia’s available vaccines should potentially improve their efficacy is that when encapsulated in nanoparticles, both viral nucleic material and adjuvants should reach their target destination cells. This serves multiple purposes that other types of vaccines don’t.

Firstly, it means that adjuvants aren’t as likely wander off and affect other cells. If you are targeting lung cells, you don’t want the adjuvants backstroking towards the brain, for example.

Secondly, it may mean that the amount of adjuvant is less because you don’t have to account for the loose amount that wanders off, reducing its effectiveness.

Thirdly, the adjuvant is less likely to degrade along its journey, also reducing its effectiveness.

Fourthly, if the antigen (here, nucleic material) and the adjuvant arrive at the target cells at different times, it can set up an autoimmune response where we react against our cells (self-antigens) if these other cells, rather than the target cells, have taken up the adjuvant.

This type of nanoparticle delivery process is already utilised with common supplements or formulas you may have taken. For example, liposomal vitamin C or Mutaflor (an Iron formula), in which the iron molecule is attached to a sugar molecule for ease of absorption.

Another possible positive for this nanoparticle process is that the smaller molecules can also move through the spaces between cells, where other larger, non-nanoparticle vaccines cannot. Material in these spaces is picked up by the lymphatic system rather than the circulatory system. The lymphatic system is vital to our immune response whereby certain cells in the lymphatic system called antigen presenting cells take the antigen (inert viral material) to the lymph nodes to meet other immune cells which go on to stimulate much longer lasting immune responses (sometimes years, although we’re not sure this is the case yet with SARS-CoV 2?).

Although this may be seen as a positive, what is not talked about is that if viral material can be delivered to the lymphatic system, then so can the adjuvants. If we react to the adjuvants then this is a problem, because as many of you will know, once something is in the lymphatic system (like cancer), it can end up creating a problem anywhere.

So, while nanoparticle technology would seem to be a safer, more efficient way of delivering a vaccine, there are issues as noted in the previous paragraph.

So, what are they adjuvants in the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines?

Only 29 of the 202 companies that applied to produce a vaccine made it through the initial standards to start trials. Of these companies, very few have released their initial data on safety and ability to produce an immune response.

To get the viral material into the cellular mechanism, amongst others, Pfizer has used lipid nanoparticles cholesterol, phosphatidylcholine and polyethylene glycol-lipid. They did not list all the LNPs they used. There is no indication from Pfizer that they did or did not use adjuvants. However, they do mention that the viral material can act as an adjuvant and there is increasing use of certain LNPs themselves as adjuvants. This would seem to be better than, say, mercury.

Early trials did not list any severe reactions, but common adverse events included headache, fever and pain. Note here that Pfizer was judging its response on IgG mediated assays, which, as already mentioned, is not aimed at preventing infection or transmission of coronavirus.

The AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t mention whether it used an adjuvant. It only tested for an IgG response and its adverse events were listed as pain, fatigue and headache.

Of the 29 listed trial participants, only 4 companies directly mention the use of adjuvants. The rest? Do they or don’t they?

Part of the problem with both vaccines is that limited information is available. Many researchers and scientists outside of the company bubble are guessing at the possible mechanisms of function.

Adjuvants should be fully and specifically listed. According to an article in Frontiers in Immunology titled Adjuvants for Coronavirus it is written:

Aluminium salt-based adjuvants (alum) were the first adjuvants used in licensed human vaccines. They are still the most widely used because of their wide-spectrum ability to strengthen immune responses and their excellent track record of safety. In limited coronavirus vaccine studies, it has been suggested that neutralizing antibody against the spike protein might be mechanistically correlated with immune protection. When alum was formulated with S protein or receptor- binding domain (RBD), it significantly enhanced humoral immune responses. This was demonstrated by higher titres of serum IgG1, increased high affinity viral neutralising antibodies, and the generation of long-lasting memory B cells in mice.

The Pfizer vaccine uses the S protein / RBD mechanism for its action, but it doesn’t it doesn’t say whether it does or doesn’t use aluminium as a adjuvant?

Mentioned above in the Pfizer vaccine ingredient list is the lipid nanoparticle polyethylene glycol. Whilst it is not a heavy metal adjuvant like mercury or aluminium, please read the following article elsewhere in this newsletter:

Immediate Hypersensitivity to Polyethylene Glycols and Polysorbates: More Common Than We Have Recognized.

This article highlight just a few of the questions that should be asked about when making this important decision. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of information you are likely to get via many of the media outlets we utilise. It’s important to be informed.

Be well.

Vaccines & polyethylene glycol (peg)

1/3/2021

I have noticed some supplement companies in Australia are starting to omit PEG from their products.

Polyethylene glycols (PEG) have many and varied uses in medical and commercial environments.

They are commonly used as carrier molecules in liquid or solid type medications. It is used to conjugate (bind) with medications to improve their efficiency, their effectiveness and ability to generate an immune response.

It is a petroleum based product, although more natural forms have been developed. It has been banned from organic cosmetic products in the EU.

In the US, it is used as the primary component in oral bowel preparation formulas for colonoscopy.

In recent times, focus has been on its role in anaphylaxis to bowel prep liquids. There seems to be insufficient understanding of its reactive capability in medications. There have been reports of multiple skin related exposures to topical creams containing PEG.

Gastrointestinal exposure is suggested to cause reactions in those with already impaired mucosal barriers. In general, impaired epithelial lining of the gut and blood vessels (here called endothelium) is thought to be one of the factors associated with the co-morbidities of CoV-19.

At this point in time, it is important to know that the mechanism of action is not well understood.

It may be relevant to note that PEG is being used as a lipid nanoparticle (LNP) to help increase the efficacy of the current Pfizer vaccination. Part of its role may be to act as a adjuvant to provoke the tissue into a heightened inflammatory or immune response?

Be well.

By the way, if you’d like to read more (and I suggest you do!) have a look at the following:

The Dirty Dozen: PEG Compounds and their contaminants
Safety Evaluation of Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) Compounds for Cosmetic Use
Probable neuropsychiatric toxicity of polyethylene glycol: roles of media, internet and the caregivers

SARS Covid 2

24/4/2020

RIGHT. OH, UH, YOU'LL STILL BE HERE WHEN I GET OUT?

The first thing I want to say, is that I sincerely hope that you are doing fine?  We are at a crossroads in history and the knock-on effects from SARS CoV 2 will likely travel as both waves and ripples across life as we know it from now on.

There are many ways to examine SARS CoV 2 but the issue concerning me at the moment is the social isolation that has been forced upon us.

Now, the circumstances around SARS CoV 2 are a serious issue, but just as in treatment sessions with you, I often pause to feel the path of least resistance within a problem, and this morning, I decided to embody the spirit of Steve McQueen.  I was thinking about the greatest self-imposed or imposed isolation movies of all time and added the ‘Great Escape’ to that list (is that irony?)

Take a moment to escape the gravitas of the Corona virus and imbibe the Steve McQueen cool.  Double click on the clip and cue the theme music ...

So, you’ll still be here when I get out, right?

The social isolation that has been forced upon us is a serious issue.  Despite having a more than reasonable understanding of the immune system and virology and having had to accept the mandate around social distancing, it is still perturbing for me, as a human being, to remain isolated for months and to have people jump back when they suddenly realise I’m in the vicinity or to be faced with the open palm upon approach; and to have to deal with the defensively raised voice and the constant wide-eyed analysis over what you’re next move might be in the shopping isle.  Little things they might be, but they have a snowballing effect on your psyche.

When you spend time exploring the plethora of research papers comparing social isolation with various health issues and outcomes, you realise the magnitude of this situation.  To be fair, there is research arguing both sides of the coin:  social isolation does and does not affect health outcomes.  However, the majority of evidence ups in favour of poorer health for those that are isolated.  Most of us will not need to read through research statistics to know this.

It doesn’t matter whether the outcomes are emotional, mental physical or otherwise.  When you analyse all-cause morbidity (this means it doesn’t matter what you die from), those that are socially isolated die sooner within a given time frame than those who have regular social contact.  You can smoke, drink, have high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease – it doesn’t matter what you die from, you are much more likely to die earlier than if you have these issues but maintain your connections.

The following points I wish to stress here are highlighted in an article - Social Isolation: A Predictor of Mortality Comparable to Traditional Clinical Risk Factors (2013).

Social isolation factors predicted mortality at hazard ratio levels similar to or higher than those of several standard clinical risk factors. The paper goes on to suggest that social isolation affects mortality just as much as smoking and more than other clinical benchmarks, including ethnicity, age, education levels, and income.

In models comparing social isolation variables, unmarried status and infrequent religious activity are predictive of mortality in both men and women.

A lack of group memberships predicted mortality amongst men and infrequent social contact predicted mortality amongst women.

A point to note: amongst socially isolated people, only smoking and high blood pressure were (constantly) predictive of mortality amongst other variables measured. Obesity and cholesterol levels were not.

The point we have to understand here in relation to SARS CoV 2, is that social isolation affects your health. Does this matter? You bet.

The paper Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes (2007) clearly highlights some of the biological mechanisms produced by social isolation. For example, gene expression alters when you are socially isolated. This means the make-up of your genes change such they (and therefore, your cells and organs) produce different by-products or that they don’t produce their normal by-products at all. To be specific:

Isolated individuals had greater expression of genes producing pro-inflammatory cytokine signalling and prostaglandin synthesis. In short, you house more inflammation. If prolonged, it’s a sure pathway towards autoimmune issues and chronic disease.

Isolated people had under-expression of genes related to antiviral resistance, antibody production and lymphocyte function. This last sentence is worth reading again.

My point here is that there is a cost-benefit analysis to be done comparing protective biological mechanisms with social isolation.  I haven’t even touched on the mental and emotional issues, but they need to be included here, as well.

This is just information, but information is power.  What you do with it is up to you.  My goal here is to have people think, and when it comes down to it, make informed decisions for the greater good around the Corona Virus.

I have noticed in my clinic, that people want to talk about the Corona Virus.  People NEED to talk about it.  VENT about it, even.  Whilst people are towing the isolation line, there is a sense of fear, frustration and a lack of trust.  People have questions.  And rightly so!

So, stay connected.  Observe reasonable and common-sense restrictions but stay connected with what it means to be human.  Get out and get some sun and exercise.  You can still exercise with another.  Grab a coffee on the way back.  Be in touch. Don’t give in to the fear.  Encourage others to do the same.

I’ll still be here when you get back!

PHIlosophy(a blog)

World peace, freedom & human rights reflections

Is this the most important question of our time?

Covid-19 Data: A depth dive

Vaccines & polyethylene glycol (peg)

SARS Covid 2

RIGHT. OH, UH, YOU'LL STILL BE HERE WHEN I GET OUT?

david macdonald

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