I feel like Stan Laurel when Oliver Hardy would say to him; “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
As some of you who are patients of mine know, I had to “quarantine” back in 2020 when the whole COVID event started. At the time I felt that I could have been infected by a Team member in our office who contacted me and told me that she had begun to experience symptoms and had a positive COVID test. In spite of the fact that I had not had contact with her while she was symptomatic, I decided that for the sake of my patients and those with whom I would be in contact that the best course would be to close the office and for me to quarantine, which I did at that time.
After experiencing no symptoms at all and with a negative COVID test in hand, I returned to normal duties caring for our patients.*
Well, fast forward about a year and a half and here we go again. You see last Sunday night my wife, Liane, began to experience some mild symptoms including a cough, slight fever, and fatigue. As a result, on Monday morning, she had a COVID test performed. I came home on Tuesday from the office for a teleconference meeting regarding my 90 year old father-in-law who had recently experience a stroke. As I walked in the door, I was informed by Liane that she received her test results back and, they were positive. Well as you can imagine I went into overdrive to make all of the changes that were necessary. In spite of the fact that I was not experiencing any symptoms whatsoever I needed to shut my office down once again and quarantine. So, here is another fine mess I have gotten into.
Now, let’s clarify a few issues. First of all, COVID-19, and the SARS-CoV-2 or coronavirus is real, unprecedented, and can be deadly. So, why have some individuals had severe life-threatening infections and yet others have the sniffles for a few days and then it is over?
One of the main differences if what we have commonly heard referred to as “co-morbidities”. These include such things as obesity, which unfortunately in our society is an epidemic. Other co-morbidities include auto-immune conditions. These include such conditions as Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and numerous other autoimmune diagnoses which also have become all too common today. Of course, other co-morbidities include such things as systemic inflammation which is also pervasive in our culture primarily due to our S.A.D. or sad American diet which is loaded with inflammation-promoting Omega-6 fatty acids, and typically very low in anti-inflammatory Omega-3 fats.
But the big kahuna in this equation is one of the most preventable conditions yet one of the most common in our society: diabetes. And when we consider tthe high glycemic, high sugar diets of our children we can understand why we are experiencing an epidemic of juvenile obesity, and concurrent diabetes in this young age group. When we take a look at those who have severe infections, and life threatening or live consuming consequences from a novel coronavirus infection we see that most have at least one, but more typically multiple of these co-morbidities.
We must also look at other potential reasons that some have little or no symptoms from a COVID infection. In my next article, I will write about the research validating the statistic indicating that individuals who have type O blood have a greater resistance to the novel coronavirus. In this study you will see that even our genetic make up will enhance our resistance to this virus.
I am currently 3 days into my exposure to my wife’s infection. According to our County Department of Health the incubation period for the virus is 3-5 days. Therefore, I could still demonstrate symptoms within the next couple days. So, I am not out of the woods yet. However, I have to say that at this point I have no symptoms whatsoever.
I will keep you posted about how I do over the next week. I plan to have a COVID test done on Saturday to see where I stand at that time and make some decisions from there. I will need to quarantine for 10 days if I remain asymptomatic and have a negative test according to the Health Department, and I will do my best to stay busy in the meantime. As those of you who know me well can attest, I will begin feeling like a caged animal, and that is beginning to occur. I will do what I have to at this point however to keep busy. You can count on that!
*article has been corrected for accuracy since original posting.