Why COVID-19 kills some people and spares others.
For some reason, perhaps due to the massive amount of fear porn being visited upon us, the prevalent thinking is that anyone is at risk of dying from Covid-19. Gladly, for most, this is not true.
If we were present at an event like a mall shooting, that has occurred in many places around the world, your likelihood of dying from gunshot wounds would be essentially random. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Covid-19 does not kill randomly.
It does not seek out unvaccinated people. It seeks out any body, but not every body will be affected in the same way.
WHY?
What kills or harms people, is solely their inability of their body to deal to it adequately. And that has all to do with their immune system.
So in our criminal analogy, Covid-19 is more like the petty thief, or pickpocket, who is able to take advantage of the vulnerable, the low hanging fruit. And who runs away when confronted by a strong person.
Now we all know if we are exposed to the virus, our body will have to deal with it. For some, with a healthy immune system they may even be asymptomatic and notice hardly any change. For others, it may be experienced as one or two days of mild discomfort much like a cold. There will be those who experience it as a flu episode, with a week off work. Then there will be those, who for their own reasons will go to hospital. The majority will still recover and return home, others will need specialist treatment in ICU.
For some perspective, only 43 people have had to be admitted to ICU with Covid in New Zealand as of 15 November 2021. That is less than three for every DHB over 20 months.
That’s hardly a major strain on our hospital system, given that over that period we have had over 8,000 cases at this time, and with that only 464 hospital admissions. Again to give perspective, that is only 23 per DHB over 20 months. eg. 1 per month per DHB.
Extrapolation
Well if there was a mass outbreak, can you extrapolate those numbers? Well perhaps not at all.
The reason is our Mall Shooter analogy shows us, and that is not what Covid is about.
Covid will hospitalise, and potentially assist in the deaths of only those people who are in “the firing line”. What is the Covid-19 firing line then?
There is an existing death profile, consisting mainly of the elderly, but also some younger. (2)
I will leave the details of this up to the scientists who are looking at this in more detail, but essentially:
Underlying health conditions are thought to be an important factor influencing disease severity. (1)
Put simply, it’s your immune system, your defence against any disease. It’s a bit like our military and related agencies that are there to defend our country. It’s layered. If an enemy slips in there are local “police” to catch them. We’ve provided a link to the John Hopkins University to help you understand that more. (3)
The BBC also have an excellent article comparing our immune system to the old world castle defences. (4)
Every year prior to 2019, over 650 people died of the Flu in New Zealand. Who were they? Mainly the elderly, but some others as well. The infection they were dealing with could not be dealt with by their defences, their immune system.
Now the Flu is quite common, ie it gets around, and most people will be exposed to it, and some will have some uncomfortable days, but others will not be affected. Why? because they are healthy! Sadly, we found around 650 a year died.
But for all the sadness, death is a part of life, and instead of trying to protect these people by drastic measures, we needed to also consider the lives and livelihoods of everybody else. In the same way we have come to accept the deaths of over 350 per year on the roads.
Installing 20 km/hr limiters on every vehicle in the country would save many of those lives, but we don’t. It would have made our economy grind to a halt. Sound familiar?
So if Covid-19 was to become rampant, and there is no doubt it will at some time, what will happen? Well if we look at the logic of the previous paragraphs, we will have the likely candidates for demise, and we will have others who will get sick, and there will be those who notice little if any.
But how many will be affected?
One has to agree that Covid-19 is more infectious. But it is not more virulent. What does that mean? It means it can be passed on easier and faster, but the effect is only marginally greater than the Flu.
On a scale of 0 to 100 for mortality, with the Ebola and Marburg viruses at 100, the flu and Covid-19 both rate below 2.5.
If the credible theory that it escaped from the Wuhan Laboratory after some “gain of function research” (funded by the USA Government) is true, then that would explain why it has travelled the world so quickly. So being more infectious it will travel more quickly than seasonal flu.
But that only means that the group of likely candidates will be affected more quickly. But once that cohort is exhausted, it will not kill any more. There are only so many people that can be killed by the virus, because the average state of the population’s immune system would not allow that.
they were there only “to isolate”
The same would apply to hospitalisation. Only so many people truly need to go to hospital. Many go for comfort, and there are other less expensive ways to treat them. On a recent TV One Sunday Documentary, interviewing a mother and child in hospital, where the child was Covid positive, the mother revealed they were there only “to isolate”, as it was inconvenient to do so at home. I don’t think the reporter was impressed, and when questioned further on this, the mother appeared embarrassed.
So what does predispose us to catching Covid-19:
- In general, risk factors for more severe COVID-19 outcomes include:
- Age
- Diabetes (type 1 and type 2)
- Heart disease and hypertension
- Smoking
- Blood type
- Obesity
- Genetic factors
You can Read More here at Live Science.
So where are the Covid-19 campaigns to stop smoking, reduce obesity by shutting down all those fast food outlets, reducing diabetes and promoting stress reduction through meditation and the like?
Sadly there are none. We are left with a single mode solution that appears to be falling in efficacy every month, now requiring continual boosters to retain usefulness. All the while the Pharmaceutical industry is making a mint out of this tragedy.
One just has to wonder, how this could be happening? If it was a lab leak in China, and the same industry has profited, then questions need to be answered.
(1) https://www.livescience.com/why-covid-19-coronavirus-deadly-for-some-people.html
(3) https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/the-immune-system
(4) https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59260294