I believe that medicine’s potential is much more than the version we see in the world today. A doctor should be an educator with the goal of bringing patients to a place of deeper understanding of who they are in the world. To me, medicine is ultimately about self-empowerment through self-knowledge and growth.
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What a year it has been! Last year at this time Pandemic Pandemania was just getting started. We suddenly realized the new viral infection was wildly out of the barn and was spreading unchecked. The governor was readying to declare a state of emergency (it came March 10th) based on the Berkshire outbreak. New York had just diagnosed it first case.
1918 was hot on everyone’s minds, and we had virtually no access to testing.
Would this infection have a 10% mortality? We didn’t know.
We had been long overdue for an event like this. We dusted off the playbook and started calmly getting our plan together.
We’ve come a long way. Mortality isn’t 10%. It’s actually 0.39% if you acknowledge what all the statistical models say: that the 29M confirmed cases is a major underestimate the actual cases and use at least 132M cases (40% of the population) as your denominator. This is a conservative number, by my estimates. 40% or more of the population with immunity would be a good explanation of the sudden decline in cases in January this year.
In any case it’s still far worse than any flu (which has a mortality rate of 0.1%), but doesn’t need a wartime-like ‘full steam ahead’ pandemic approach suspending true deliberations as if the mortality rate was actually 10% or even 2%.
My message is to calm it down and deliberate as the less-at-risk are deciding if they should get a shot. Compiling some information should be helpful and is the point of this writing. So relax and enjoy this week’s thoughts.
There may be talk of a plateau in the case decline nationally, but locally our county saw under 40 cases over the last week. another drop- this tie 45%! 39 cases in a week is less than 10% of what we were seeing at the turn of the year and close to last summer’s simmering numbers.
Did you know that the heart is not a pump?
An in-depth spiritual understanding of the heart caused philosopher and innovator Rudolf Steiner to reach this conclusion.A modern scientist who has taken up research to explore this idea said, “[the heart] acts like a biological vortex momentum booster that works with the ‘draw’ (suction) of the circulation of the blood, especially from the peripheral capillary dynamics.”
In other words, the veins and the heart have a suction that is the main driver of the entire circulation! The heart boosts the movement from the veins and capillaries themselves.
In fact, when doctors did the first bypass surgery they were shocked to see that the heart stopped beating when the veins to it were clamped. They just assumed there was an intrinsic drive to the “pump.” But there’s not. The suction driving the blood returning to the heart is its main driving force of the heart and the circulation.
And consider this: blood circulates in a developing human embryo before the heart is even formed!
New understanding about the heart and circulation is vital not only for medicine but also for our lives as citizens of the earth. Understanding ourselves is an important foundation for everything we do.
There is no beating heart without the blood and its circulation. The heart acts as an agent of the peripheral circulation: to listen and enhance and serve.
It’s the same with doctoring: there is no doctor without his or her patients. The doctor is there to serve.
And similarly, there is no government without its people. In a right configuration the people’s activity instructs and moves the central action, not the opposite.
Here’s a reminder that we are the point of the entire exercise. We are the central consideration. This is all for us and our benefit.
The government agenda is clear. God bless them. Vaccinate as many people as possible. Head down, vaccinate. Get people back to work. Normalize this puppy. Get the paychecks rolling again. Let people feed their families and have the economy recover. Don’t wonder, don’t wander…Get in line.
There’s nothing wrong with that aside from the really important basic tenant of medicine to be careful with new drugs. We just don’t know that this medicine is so smart that all very low risk people should participate.
So whether you know the vaccine makes sense for you or if you think that it should be used judiciously, especially with emergency use authorization, making the rounds on the key data points is smart:
Passivity is not allowed in a healthy body as evidenced by the example of the heart’s circulation. Every cell is involved. By being educated we can drive the right agenda. We have to exercise our power and do our role.Yes, we need to listen to experts and watch the news but we need to do is to look at the data ourselves, become people who know how to delve, and make up our own mind.
The Information Age is confusing: a lot of data and a shortage of wisdom. You have to learn how to wade through this murky waters.
You probably know what informed consent is, yes? Your doctor or nurse dispassionately educates you on a procedure or treatment before you make up your mind and gives you a chance to ask any questions before you sign on. Here’s part of your informed consent presentation, by the numbers from the first part of the pandemic.
In America the death tally is over 520,000.
Those that died from COVID over the past year were one of 520,000 out of 330 million; that’s 1 person in every 660 alive in America at that time (0.16%)
Let’s compare that to 1918 (where it was estimated that 1/4 of the US population and 1/3 of the world’s population got it. US population was 103 Million then. By the end of the Pandemic of 1918 675,000 people died. That’s 1 person in every 152 in America died from it. (0.66%) >4 x as robust
In the current coronavirus pandemic, the signature trend has been the higher risk to the elderly and quite specifically the elderly in the nursing homes:
Now let me show you some numbers that will be specific for your age group.
I don’t think you’ll set a set like this anywhere out there.(source charts are available at the end of the bulletin and numbers are valid through mid feb 2021)
If you live in the Nursing home…
You had a 20% case mortality rate — your chance of dying if you got COVID while living in a nursing home during the first part of the Pandemic (one sample tallies 128,285 deaths from 635,369 cases- Medicare numbers)
10.7% of all Nursing Home residents died of COVID. (150K deaths for 1.4 M residents) (mid Feb ’21 numbers)
If you are {85 and above} and not in Nursing Home.. You had a 7.5% case mortality rate (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic).
1.2% of all 85yo plus persons died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (146K less 10% of sim aged NH residents 67.5K); (78.5K deaths/ 6.7M)
If you are {75yo – 84yo} and do not live in the Nursing Home..
You had a 4% case mortality (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.5% Percentage of all {75-84yo} who died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (128K less 10% of sim aged NH residents 46.8K = 81.2K deaths/ 16M
If you are {65yo – 74yo} and do not live in the Nursing Home…
You had a 1.5% case mortality (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.26% of all {65-74yos} died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (99K less 10% of sim aged NH residents 17.4K ) / 32 MIf you are {55yo – 64yo} and do not live in the Nursing Home…
You had a 0.4% case mortality rate (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.14% Percentage of all {55-64yo} who died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (54K less 10% of sim aged NH residents 17.5K ) / 38.2 MIf you are {45yo – 54yo}You had a 0.16% case mortality rate (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.00052% of all {45-54yo} died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (21K / 40.63M )
If you are {35yo – 44yo}You had a 0.06% case mortality rate (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.00018% of all {35-44yo} who died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (7.7k/41.9M)
If you are {25yo – 34yo}You had a 0.019% case mortality rate (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.000062% of all {25-34yo} died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (2.9k/46.88M)
If you are {15yo – 24yo}You had a 0.0045% case mortality rate (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic)
0.000015% of all {15-24yo} died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (0.65k/43.5M)
If you are {under 15yo}You had a 0.002% case mortality rate (2/100,000) (chance of dying if you got COVID during the 1st portion [through mid-feb ’21] of the pandemic); (99.998% will survive)
0.0000024% of all {children under 15yo} died from COVID over the first portion of the pandemic (145/60.82M)
One last stat:
And a couple comments:
Whether we vaccinate or not needs our deliberation and our decision, and data supports what we do as individuals and together as a society. This is the type of the data we can use to chart our course.
I hope you find it helpful!
Also see COVID Infection Fatality Rates by Sex and Age.
