COVID AND ITS KILLING INSTINCTS

IWOULD like to share more on this most asked questions from different people across the country. Why are people infected with Covid-19 reporting that they began to feel better before becoming critically ill?

It’s been years since my immunology and epidemiology studies but I’ll give a detailed discussion on this shot.

Did you know that fighting off infection is very resource-intensive, so your body starts off with the lightweight, less expensive methods, first? And then, if the infection continues, your body starts rolling out the stronger immune response? It’s often called the immune cascade response.

So, to continue in perhaps overly simplistic layman’s terms for the reader to get a clear understanding: Covid-19 is peculiar in that it originated as a non-human virus (Bats, I believe, were the original host) that recombined/mutated in ways that allowed it to start using human cells as hosts for replication.

Part of the problem with Covid-19 could be that our bodies‘immune systems respond to the proteins recognised as human, but not the non-human ones. The body ramps up a fever, etc so the heat activates certain proteins that then teins.

You get a headache. You feel like crap. The virus burrows into your cells, hiding, and starts hijacking them to reproduce. Your immune system thinks it’s beaten the bad guys, your fever goes down. You’re tired, but feel “better.”

But your immune system doesn’t recognise the non-human viral components as dangerous until they’ve infected a vast number of cells and those have started rupturing, dumping billions of copies of the activate other provirus into the fluid bathing the cells (interstitial fluid).

When this happens, a massive inflammation response occurs, and in some cases, something called a “cytokine storm.”

Cytokines are one of the many compounds the immune system has in its arsenal to fight infection, and when activated in large enough numbers, they can push the immune system into over-kill.

Literally, people who thought they were doing better take a sudden, drastic turn for the worse. Because Covid-19 has an affinity for the respiratory tract, it damages the lungs.

The flood of fluid into the lungs caused by the virus replication and the cytokine response causes the damaged lungs to fill up. Even with respirators, they become hypoxic and die.

Those who experience the most critical stages of the illness and “recover” are most likely going to have lung damage for the rest of their lives, and those who survived cytokine storms may be at risk for ongoing a u t o - i mmune disease.

This is not a virus to be trifled with.

(1) While inflammation and cytokine storms play a role in the more catastrophic Covid-19 illnesses, it appears that the virus’ co-opting of the ACE2 receptors is causing a disruption of enzymatic expression in a system that regulates blood pressure and fluid balance.

This is resulting in over-expression of kinins (bradykinins) and leaky blood vessels and excess fluid build up.

I wish Zambia we can put the steaming concept into testing.... Mr Scientist wake up and don’t sleep let’s do this together and fight the virus.