This Week in Health: Coronavirus Update

It is a shame that some countries allow politics to get in the way of science. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 but to think we could have contained this virus before it got to this point is not out of the realm of plausibility. It is not enough any more to just have PCR and Rapid testing - those are reactive measures. Medicine fields by nature are meant to be proactive and preventative - it is just unfortunate that some countries do not choose to or have the means to be this way.

When it comes to limiting the spread of coronavirus everyone knows the deal by now - social distancing, masks up (mouth and nose) wash hands and obey protocols that limit the amount of people in one space at a time. Also, countries must begin to evolve the rate at which they do sequencing if we wish to contain this already disastrous spread.

“There are two ways that a coronavirus can become more transmissible. One is by binding more effectively to human cells. When this happens, a person who inhales viral particles becomes slightly more likely to develop an infection. The other is by replicating more efficiently, creating higher numbers of viral particles in an infected person, so that they exhale more particles with each breath (making it statistically more likely that one of the particles will infect someone else.) If a breath contains 10 percent more viral particles, it is that much more likely that one will land in someone else’s nose.” (The Atlantic)

Zooming in to Ohio specifically - Governor DeWine has fumbled the vaccine rollout mightily. His inability to put vaccines in the hands of medical professionals has been well-documented. Also, the infrastructure at some of these facilities has been inefficiently designed and ill-equipped to handle large-scale vaccinations. This has to do with personnel, facilities and other logistical factors.

This Covid-19 coronavirus has begun to mutate and new strains are emerging that are 70% more transmissible. This means that travel bans are a long-gone solution considering the fact that these ‘variants’ have additional ‘spikes’ that latch onto your cells in a much more aggressive manner.

Given this information, Governor DeWine plans to incentivize. If the hospital census stays below 3,500 patients for seven straight days, Ohio’s curfew will extend to 11 P.M. Below 3,000 - midnight and below 2,500 curfew is eliminated altogether. If this were to occur then yes, it would be nice to enjoy more drinks and support small businesses later into the evening. But, at what cost? What is really important to the majority of individuals?

The answers are not clear and politics have definitely impeded the progress of medicine and scientific evidence. Let us now pause to take a moment to look at the big picture and think about what it will really take to eradicate the Sars-COV.

Ian Romaker

Wordsmith