Abdominal obesity with damaged immune function is a national emergency. Overeating with under-exercising causes severe acute respiratory illness in sedentary individuals infected with COVID-19.

Also, greatly increases the likelihood of infecting someone young and healthy. In fact, people with abdominal obesity or type 2 diabetes are probably the major source of COVID-19 infection in everybody else.

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COVID-19 is an acute viral respiratory illness that can spread from person to person. It is caused by a coronavirus similar to others that cause acute respiratory illnesses, even including the common cold. Infection can be so mild as to cause no symptoms at all or so severe as to cause serious symptoms and even to cause death.

This coronavirus called COVID-19 is enough different from all the others that there are no vaccines to prevent illness following infection. Also, there are no medications yet proven specifically effective in treating its effects.

With no prevention or treatments, this virus has spread as an epidemic throughout the world. Here in the US, the cost of treating those infected and the cost of preventing its spread between people has been enormous. It spreads rapidly and causes more serious illness than influenza.

Every year, about 12% of the population in the US gets the flu. That is they have symptoms from infection with influenza virus. Of those with symptoms, 1 or 2% have to be hospitalized and 1 in 10 of those hospitalized don’t recover. The result is 30,000 to 50,000 deaths every year from influenza.

In the first 3 months of illness with COVID-19 in the US, 1.4 million people have suffered symptoms. More than 20% of them have had to be hospitalized and more than 80,000 have died. Deaths in just three months more than twice the total deaths caused by influenza in a whole year. We still don’t know how many there will be in 12 months! Could be 3 or 4 times more!

The cost of COVID-19 in 2020 will be enormous. Both Health Care Costs and Costs to the Economy.

Medical treatment for COVID-19 will increase Health Care Costs by about 20%. Costs to the US economy for public health measures will reduce Gross Domestic Product about 20%.

Costs of Medical Treatment for COVID-19 will be about seventy times more than annual costs for medical treatment of influenza.

Portioning costs to everybody will increase Health Care Costs by $2,400. Increase caused by Influenza will be about $350.

Loss of GDP caused by COVID-19 will be about 200 times greater than loss caused by Influenza.

Loss of GDP portioned to everybody will be an annual cost of $15,000!

COVID-19 frequently is serious and potentially deadly for anyone with abdominal obesity. That’s half of the US adult population. The other half may not even have symptoms if infected or be infectious to anyone else.

Weight reduction and moderate exercise abolish risk of severe COVID-19 for individuals with abdominal obesity and greatly decrease risk of transmission to others.

No vaccine against COVID-19 will ever substitute for recovery from abdominal obesity. Vaccines against other types of coronavirus have never been successful protecting against illness. Vaccines against influenza viruses only protect about 40% of those who have been vaccinated. Also, vaccination is required every year. Only about 50% of those who could be protected actually get vaccinated each year.

The natural defense against COVID-19 involves the immune system. This includes white blood cells circulating in blood and specialized cells in organs and tissues. Immune cells recognize normal, healthy cells. They also recognize unhealthy cells. Injury or infection causes immune cells to isolate and remove unhealthy cells.

Immune cells also recognize unhealthy conditions. They collect and multiply in unhealthy tissue. Some immune cells tear down unhealthy tissue and other immune cells clean up and restore healthy conditions.

Fat in the abdomen is recognized as unhealthy. Immune cells accumulate and multiply there, especially the tear-down cells. Eventually, immune action in abdominal fat dominates the whole immunity system. Levels of immune cells, proteins and hormones all rise above normal in blood samples and other tissues. But not enough to take care of new COVID-19 infection.

Immune cells depend on normal metabolism of sugar, fat and protein just like cells in all other systems. When overloaded with sugar and fat, they become resistant to insulin. Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes further damage immune response to infection.

Response to COVID-19 requires rapid action by immune cells. The result of abdominal obesity and type 2 diabetes is slow onset and reduced strength of immune response.

The daily news about COVID-19 often reports that severe disease and death occur mostly in elderly people. That’s not completely true. Reports from New York are different than reports from China. In a report of 5,700 patients treated in hospitals in New York City, half the patients were less than 64 years of age.

Another feature of patients with COVID-19 in New York is the severe effect of obesity. Under 60 years of age, obese patients were twice as likely to be hospitalized as those who were not obese. In hospital, those with mild obesity were twice as likely to be admitted to Intensive Care Units. Patients under 60 years of age with severe obesity were 4 times as likely to be admitted for Intensive Care.

Obesity was not the most important risk factor for patients over 60 years of age.

We don’t yet know an effective treatment for COVID-19. It’s always possible that treatment will be found that is as miraculously effective as Penicillin for Streptococcal sore throat.

We also don’t have an effective vaccine for prevention of COVID-19. It’s always possible a vaccine will be produced that is as miraculously effective as polio vaccine for acute poliomyelitis.

We do know that normal healthy % body fat and regular routine of moderate exercise greatly increase natural resistance to all viral infections.

We can prevent severe symptoms of COVID-19 in ourselves and avoid transmission of infection to others.

We are pleased to share our blog articles with you, and we are always interested to hear from our readers. Our website address is: www.herdhealthcare.com

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