Concerns with Covid-19

When there is an infection, such as Covid-19 the body’s defences repel the invader unless there is a saturation level to which it cannot overcome. This may vary according to things like proximity; where droplet sizes carry different amounts from an infected person lessening over distance, time in that proximity; the longer the period the greater the chance, coverings; where the better the covering the more is filtered out, exertion; where the greater the inflows and outflows of air, the more is taken in or expressed, and immune system health; where the less healthy a person is the weaker the defences. Smaller amounts are from touch, being more of a bacteria thing, as viruses have a limited effective life on all but shiny surfaces. But other viruses and bacteria can take advantage in the lull or weakness produced by a previous or current infection. One or more can affect the overall risk and outcome, the greater the quantity initially received proportional to the outcome, such as receiving a small amount in one area of the lungs being considerably different to receiving the same in 10 areas of the lungs. When a certain threshold is exceeded, usually from a major infection, the lungs allow backward transmission and dispersal, the incidence of the virus controlling the levels expelled. In closely confined areas this can increase concentrations dramatically, especially if there is more than one highly infected person present, doubling or tripling the level in the environment.

So protection, proximity, time, health, hygiene are the order of the day. Each of them raising the bar the virus has to get over. Twice the distance being approximately equivalent to a quarter the droplet size and it’s content, the efficiency of the mask reducing that size even further by 50-95%, time about equivalent, health and age doubling risk every 5 years equivalent, and hygiene decreasing the risk from opportune additions. This tends to be the formula for determining the eventual cumulative effect on the body. Cause and effect.

From what we can see about Covid-19 when it enters the body it uses the ACE2 enzyme that a lot of cells have, especially the squamous epithelial cells in the lungs and surface areas such as the tongue, and possibly contact areas such the surfaces of the hands and feet.  It can also go deeper into body and affect other similar cells surrounding organs in the body causing overall inflammations there.

ACE2 forms part of the Renin–Angiotensin-Aldosterone system (RAAS) that one part balances the ACE and ACE2 enzymes that are out of kilter in cases of incorrect blood pressure and diabetes, but it also affects the oxygen saturation and conversion system, oxygen in the wrong form causing cells damage as well as being a necessary part of it survival. It could be that this oxygen damage is a precursor to cytokine proliferation and gridlock and the subsequent tissue scarring.

For the very young these are in a state of rapid growth and construction, but as you get older they mature into a periodic state of renewal, going through many cycles of death and renewal, hopefully causing as few errors as possible in the process. This is when cancer risk can increase.

We are all given a genetic load when our parents first conceive us. Some are very high, some are very low, but most severe genetic problems being weeded out before we are born. Most problems that would render our bodies non-functional happen before we are born. If we manage to get past this first threshold we start with a genetic load when we are born that is affected by environment and lifestyle, the more severe the shorter the life, and the chance for errors to occur when the cells are regenerated; some things like smoking, alcohol, drugs, obesity and pollution add to that load. I would add that exposure to bacteria and viruses also add to that load, being in an area where constant exposure reducing the efforts of a healthy lifestyle. A bit like between a base jumper and being a health fanatic, the second being mostly overcome by the first, but it’s surprising the number who are both. Our mis-assessment of risk being the subject of another article.

Typically the various areas of the body renew at these various rates:

This is only a very rough set of figures and is open to a lot of doubt over timings and what constitutes renewal. Many ‘known’ figures currently calculated are on the basis on survivability of cells rather than renewal, and few are dynamic figures, being mainly laboratory estimates from dead or terminal sources.

Now Covid-19 enters the equation. This utilises the ACE2 enzyme that is in varying amounts, mainly on the surface areas, interfering with the process of cells death and regeneration in varying amounts, causing them to renew with more errors. You might even say that it ages the process by a certain amount, the cells that renew at a faster rate having more problems than those that renew at a slower rate. The extent to which the body is visited by such things as a virus dictates the level to which the overall body inflammation occurs, some with a more impaired system being overrun by this inflammation, and large amounts of steroids only redressing the balance on top of remedial drugs.

You do wonder if viruses like covid and bacteria are something to do with the aging of the body generally, pushing that recycling of the body’s cells at a faster rate than they should normally go. Replication is equivalent to error.

There have been a number of symptoms in which cells of this type, the flatter and therefore more permeable ones, usually associated with surfaces of organs, have been adversely affected, with cases of whole body infection and inflammation, needing high doses of steroids to control on top of other inhibitory drugs.

When we are first created our cells conform mainly to the pattern of our genetics, but from the moment our brain stem is created we take in patterns to be recognised and formed into a logical matrix. When we are young this matrix is quite plastic and rewires itself freely to new information, but as we get older past maturity we learn new tasks and ways of doing things based on the logical matrix that is created up to this point. The tracks and links that are created in the brain consistute our method of working and logical matrix. and memory reinforcement like going over and creating new tracks within this matrix. We are constantly learning and creating new tracks and ways of doing things. This task produces a lot of chaff to be cleared daily, and sleep is our way of renewing and repairing those tracks, but it also has the effect of deepening those tracks into well worn paths that are difficult to move. Dreams seem to be the continual testing of those tracks to mentally certify those connections, to us not making too much sense, but to the overall main control probing the connections and testing the memory by setting new virtual problems. It’s not surprising that we wake up with solutions. We become more set in our ways and unwilling to discard those paths. At an earlier age or one of reconstruction we are more amenable to a paradigm shift and resetting those patterns into other paths, but also more open to fixing those paths if constantly reinforced or confined to a limited set of rules in thinking.

But age invariably brings decay in those structures, producing a snowball type effect, some rolling down the hill later, some slower, but with more fixed and defined pathways, easier to damage than a less defined path that fades out. Drugs may slow this decay but it goes on, the only real way to slowing it is to reinforce the pathways or to create new pathways in the manner of early life. The best life is one of prolonging this decay so that rest of the body fails first, and death arrives before the structures decay to a really noticeable extent.

The best way seems to be learning new subjects, routines and ways of doing things, creating new pathways and effectively a supporting sub-matrix. If the existing pathways are just being deepened then when there are breaches in the personality system they can’t easily be mentally rebuilt or diverted around.

Our brains work in similar ways with similar characteristics honed by evolution. Evolution is a minimal effort system that prefers a simple option if it can find it, reusing it over and over again in fractal patterns. The nervous system uses standard structures, multiplexing, and frequencies throughout to perform similar tasks in different creatures.

The Covid virus though is an attack on the whole system, at the moment mainly being seen as ‘just something to do with the lungs,’ but probably has far reaching consequences as far as the rest of the body and our mental and personality systems go. If Covid has a major effect on the recycling of our cells, causing more errors than normal, then we may find an increase in cancers and mental problems at an earlier date than would normally be expected, possibly aging the regenerative systems of the body by as much as 10 years in people that are majorly affected.

If this is the case, then apart from using drugs to delay things the main problem will be to do with the mental and logical matrix.

For the body to be healthier a high level of flexibility and therefore resilience must be kept up. For the mind it is no different, so as broad a set of experiences and thoughts need to be maintained. Well defined and strict mental processes can give strength, but when those foundations start to decay with age, the structures produce as much to make the system fall as the processes of decay, whereas building other similar structures and widening the scope more into a web surrounding it prolongs the life making them more resilient to damage.

This is where learning new and novel supporting ideas are of great benefit, basically creating a change of matrix and way of thinking, making new and tenuous supporting pathways. A scientist researching music at a later age, taking up singing that requires a different set of rules, a musician researching scientific principles, the religious researching histories and other peoples, historians researching beliefs and how to paint, artists researching making their own paints, etc.  The goal to produce a new matrix to replace or at least support for a while, thinking of new ways of doing things that don’t necessarily rely on the existing constructed logical ways we have learnt. (I did put constricted, maybe that was a better choice.)

It’s likely that the effects of Covid are being glossed over as immediate and quickly curable, but I have this feeling that we will see long-term health problems, physical and mental, appearing after 30-40 years, so some sort of therapy may be needed at this point. Cells that can be affected by Covid-19 are in many places in the body, surrounding and on the surface of major organs, just needing a transfer from other parts that are infected with higher levels than normal

I did think about an idea of using virtual reality, biofeedback, and hypnotism combined to generate new paths in those in this way afflicted to quickly create or recreate these new logical and reasoning structures or to retrain them, but this may be for another similar article I did some time ago on the subject of brain function remapping. There’s no reason why given a suitable alternate structure to use, the brain can’t relearn and use another part of itself to perform and take over tasks that a damaged area previously did, especially with visual and physical feedback mechanisms to help it. You just need to provide the routes, reinforcement’s, and controls to do this. I’ve got to go away and think for some time about it.