1) My thoughts are based on observation and common sense.  My ‘common sense’ is not the same as yours.  All ‘common sense’ exists within a vacuum of communities and similar thought patterns and shared knowledge.  Some of it will be accurate and some will be way-off.


2) I also have a mindset buried in science and training / education.  I don’t know if my thinking has ever been my own or if my training and patterns of education, research, observation, and practical training has become my way of thinking after a lifetime of being myself.


Is that a ‘humblebrag’? It is a ‘humblebrag’ if the purpose was to intentionally inform you of something about myself was enviable.  Telling someone that you are tall or your breasts are large and it causes you physical problems is not a humblebrag if you would like to find a solution or not have other people see you as different because of this observable difference.  I am saying this in that what my thoughts are on coronavirus are based totally on what makes sense to my skill set.


I am a doctor and I see patients.  I am as ‘real world’ as I think anyone can be but my world is not the same as you and I have some assets you do not have and you have sources of information I may not have.


3) If your lifestyle is connected to things that irritate your lungs you make yourself susceptible to coronavirus, whether you think what you are doing is either harmless or of no consequence.


Examples you understand implicitly can cause harm:


a) Smoking of anything, whether it is cigarettes, vaping, hookahs, cigars, or marijuana.  If I have to make this clear: meth, crack, and ‘huffing’ are all bad for you but worse during the coronavirus outbreak.
b) Breathing in smoking materials such as incense or scorched food items like peppers or onions
c) Gasoline fumes from filling your tank or working on your car


Other things that may irritate your lungs but you do them in the pursuit of other goals:


d) Cleaning supplies that have volatile chemicals that irritate your breathing.
e) Going to the gym where you want to work out to the level of healthy exhaustion and breath deep to encourage a greater capacity in your lungs.


If you understand coronavirus (or its other names: COV-19 or Sars-cov-2) you hear that it is a LOWER respiratory illness.  That term, “lower respiratory illness’ may have slid past your intellectual filter of words because it sounds like what you have heard so much that it has become verbal ‘white noise’ which is the words “upper respiratory illness”.


An upper respiratory illness lives and populates in the upper portion of your two (dissimilar) lungs (your lungs differ in that one of them is 2 lobes and the other is 3 lobes with a notch for the space your heart uses).  In contrast, the other region of your lung, the lower respiratory region, is where coronavirus lives and populates.  This area is also where medicines and therapies have a harder time getting to and one of the many reasons coronavirus is hard to fight.


Now go back to my lists of a) to e) and see how this issue of lower respiratory illness fits in.  If you breath this virus deep into your lungs or cause an irritation in your pulmonary system that acts as a backdoor for the virus you will allow it to the region it wants to be and it is hardest to fight it.


4) Masks.  Should you wear a mask?  I say ‘yes’ but this is the opposite position I had a short time ago but, in truth, a variation of my earlier position.


a) Masks should be worn by THE INFECTED to protect other people from catching it.


b) We do not know who is infectious during the incubation period which lasts around 7-10 days


c) Everyone can be infectious and spread this illness while they are asymptomatic


d) The conclusion is that everyone should wear a mask because they may be the problem.  If you want to convince yourself that you are protecting yourself from others (the infected) the end result is the same so wear the mask and PROTECT OTHERS / BE PROTECTED from coronavirus.


5) Wash your hands.  Now!


Washing your hands is the best tool you have to protecting yourself and others.


Wash your hands a lot.  Wash your hands after anything that remotely seems to be you coming into contact with any possible source of this virus, including other people and all surfaces.


No special soaps are necessary – it is the ACTIONS OF RUBBING YOUR HANDS that will dislodge or inactivate the virus from your body.  Dislodge means to shake off in an active manner and inactivate means to disrupt the protections the virus has and that twill kill it.


What about hand sanitizers? They are good in that they are 65% or greater isopropyl alcohol.  They disrupt the outer wall and envelope protection this virus has evolved to protect itself and enter your cells.


Why not use clear grain alcohols like gin or vodka as hand sanitizer?  This has to do with the magic term “proof” as a way to measure the strength of alcoholic beverages.  Proof is a double of the percentage of alcohol, so 80 proof is 40% alcohol.  Remember when I wrote that hand sanitizers should be 65% alcohol?  A 40 % just won’t work as well [I imagine that a 40% alcohol (80 proof) hand sanitizer rubbed vigorously while washing your hands would work fine].


So what about a 200 proof (100% alcohol) vodka?  Alcohol is very volatile and the higher the proof the greater the volatile evaporation factor so soon you will have an empty bottle if you open it often to use in washing your hands.


That 65% alcohol number I provided?  It is just about the perfect percentage to both break down the coronavirus wall and not evaporate from the bottle.


6) Social distancing: the six-foot distance between people. It works well enough and it gives us a parameter to use to put our minds at ease.  It isn’t based in science but it makes us able to use stores and other conveniences.


7) Will this virus go away (i.e. will life return to normal?).  No, not in the way that you think.  This virus will slowly become less of a problem over time due to herd immunity and, possibly, a vaccine.


People will recover and that may help to create an immunological barrier to coronavirus.


The sad truth is, people will die who are not careful and people will die who are very careful but have an underlying medical factor that makes them compromised like diabetes or lung diseases or (I am sorry to write this) elderly.  Obese people also have compromised their immune system by an underlying inflammatory response so they are more at risk. Elderly people have compromised immune systems just by have many co-morbidities and having a more sedentary lifestyle which lends itself to poorer physical conditions.  


People will die who you love and others that you have no relationship to.  Epidemics are like that so we should take them seriously.

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