Surviving COVID

We blew it. Collectively we could have acted to eliminate or at least control the infection rates and deaths due to COVID-19. In L.A. County, where I live, in June 2020, the number of new infections per day was 1,000. By July it had surged to over 3,000 per day. But it was a little hard to know what those numbers meant to each of us, so it prompted me to estimate the percentage of the people in the county that were actively infectious. You can read about that estimation process here. In short, for each 1,000 new cases each day in L.A. County, there is about 1% of the population actively infectious - not having had the infection at some point in the past, but now actively able to pass it on to others. So, surging from 1,000 to 3,000 new cases per day corresponds to going from 1% of the population actively infectious to 3%. That means that by July, if you happened to pass by 100 randomly chosen people, statistically about 3 of them could pass the infection to you. Scary.

As of Nov. 21, 2020 the number of new cases per day has more than quadrupled and is over 13,000. Yikes. So, if my estimation method holds up, that means about 13% of the people in L.A. are actively infectious. At this infectiousness rate, probability math says that if you met for a holiday party with 10 random people in L.A., the chances that one or more of them would be infectious would be 1.0 - 0.87¹⁰ = 75%. So your 10-person party would have a 75% chance of having at least one person there that could infect all the others with COVID. Please think about that number as you plan your holiday get-togethers. And many parts of the country have even higher infection rates than L.A.

We are on the verge of a catastrophe. As the months of COVID have rolled on, hospitals have learned how to keep a greater number of COVID patients alive. But to do that, we need to have hospital beds, ventilators, doctors, and nurses available. If we collectively continue to blow it, we will soon overwhelm their capacity and the death rate will rise. The number of deaths is the death rate multiplied by the number of infections. So, if the death rate rises from 1% to 4% while the infections per day rise from 1,000 per day to 13,000 per day, then the number of deaths goes from 10 per day to 520 per day.

So, what can we do to avoid dying from COVID? Here are five steps that can make a huge difference.

1)      Wear masks. Evidence is quite clear that the disease passes through air. When you are near someone with COVID for a few hours and neither you nor they are wearing a mask, you are very likely to catch the disease. So, whenever you are around people that could have COVID, wear a mask.

2)      Social distance. Stay six feet or more away from people. Outside is better than inside. Shorter exposure times are better than long ones.

3)      Wash your hands. Transfer of COVID infections via surfaces is less common than through air, but if someone with COVID coughs on something and soon after that you touch it and then put your hands to your nose or eyes, you can get infected. In a normal environment, we don’t need to go overboard with hand washing. If you leave your mail or package delivery for an hour or two before touching it, don’t worry about it. But if you work in a medical clinic or a restaurant or some other environment where you are constantly touching things other people have touched or coughed on, then you need to be washing your hands constantly.

4)      Eat only whole-food plant-based foods. The death rate of people with heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure who get COVID has been found to be up to 10 times greater than the death rate for those that get COVID that don’t have these other health problems¹. And getting animal products, processed foods, and oils out of our diets eliminates many of these diseases that push up the COVID death rate. With the surge in COVID that is upon us, I urge you to make the dietary change NOW, not a few weeks from now.

5)      Wear masks. Did I mention that before? The disease spreads through the air. And by the way, wearing the mask on your chin doesn’t help. It needs to cover your nose and mouth.

Following up on number 4, above, you have the opportunity through diet to dramatically reduce your risk of death from COVID, should you become infected with it. I think this is an opportunity we all should take immediately. The current U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is over 250,000 – a huge number. But in most years, deaths due to heart disease run about 500,000. Adding in other deaths caused by our animal-products-and-oils diet, totals rise to about 1.3 million unnecessary deaths in this country every year. I suggest that now is the time to remove yourself from that large group of people that die unnecessarily due to eating the unhealthy standard American diet.

If you would like to learn more about avoiding unnecessary death by eating a healthy diet, I invite you to attend one of my upcoming virtual workshops. You can find more information about them, including signup information, here: www.nusci.org/nutrition-science-virtual-workshop

And if you live in L.A. or Orange County California, you can order tasty, life-prolonging whole-food plant-based food from the place where I get most of my meals: www.littlegreenforks.com. You don’t even need to risk going to the grocery store. The healthy food comes to you—delivered right to your door, contact-free.

With COVID infections at an all-time high, NOW is the time for you to act to minimize the spread and the death rate of this disease. Please, this year, cancel the holiday get togethers. And wear a mask. And eat only plants.

Thanks,

John Tanner
11-22-2020

References:

1.  https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid, scroll down about 3/4 to find a section that begins "Coronavirus: early-stage case fatality rates by underlying health condition..."