Your Health and the Experts - What to Make of Recommendations on Measures Against COVID-19

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With the scare of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public world-over is looking up for hope of finding final solutions to end the COVID-19 terror. However, what I hear from prominent infectious diseases experts does not seem to warrant bringing that much needed hope. A quick look at the data showing trends of confirmed cases, recovered cases and deaths, from a few selected nations, provided below will help to explaining my point of view, provided below. The data were sourced on 25th May, 2020 at the link provided below the table.

COVID-19 Snapshot for a few Selected Countries, May 2020


Worldwide                             
  Confirmed

55M   +100K

Recovered

2.23M
Deaths

346K   +4,342


Location
Confirmed
Recovered
Deaths
   Australia
7,116  +9
6,532
102
  United States
1.7M +18,586
353K
99,462 +504
 Brazil
375K  +11,687
154K
23,473 +807
 Russia
362K  +8,946
131K
3,807  +92
  United Kingdom
261K +1,625
-
36,914 +0
 Spain
235K
150K
26,834
 Italy
230K +300
142K
32,877 +92
 India
145K +6,977
60,491
4,167 +154
 France
145K +358
65,199
28,432 +65
 Canada
85,710 +1,012
44,638
6,545 +121
  Mainland China
82,992 +7
78,277
4,634
 Mexico
71,105 +2,485
49,890
7,633 +239
  Japan
16,628
13,612
851
 Austria
16,459  +19
15,138
641  +1
    Denmark
11,387  +28
9,964
563  +1
 South Korea
11,225
10,275
269

https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&sxsrf=ALeKk02zajffdm4uVawwq6PpC_HWTL3FrQ%3A1590512675111&source=hp&ei=I0zNXuDABI3e-gSe45nQAg&q=covid+19+cases%2C+australia&oq=COVOD&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgBMgcIIxCxAhAnMgcIIxCxAhAnMgcIIxCxAhAnMgQIABAKMgQIABAKMgQIABAKMgQIABAKMgQIABAKMgQIABAKMgQIABAKOgUIABCDAToCCAA6BAgjECc6BQgAEJECOgQIABADUM2ICViMqQlgwL0JaABwAHgAgAHKAYgBhgSSAQU0LjAuMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab


As we now know, COVID-19 is caused by a new strain of coronavirus and therefore no vaccine is available and  currently no  drugs are known to be effective against this infection. Interventions in effect today (lock downs, social distancing, protective masks) are  almost applied universally world-over, and certainly have demonstrated some degree of effectiveness. They are however extra-ordinarily unusual in that they interfere with normal human activities, some of which are necessary for survival. On another note, in spite of their universal use, there is a wide variation especially recorded recovered cases and deaths among the selected nations. It is quite evident that some countries  have lower deaths and  and higher recovered cases (nearing total number of confirmed cases), eg. South Korea, Australia, Japan, and China, and on the other hand other countries show high numbers of deaths and low number of recovered cases, eg. USA, UK, Brazil. Spain, Italy.

The variations in recovered cases and deaths registered in the  selected countries shown above, seem to strongly suggest that there are specific most likely lifestyle-related risk factors to COVVID-19 pandemic, which could have been addressed knowingly or unknowingly, even prior to the outbreak (as an outcome of various traditional life style blueprints) or as a result of current intervention responses to the outbreak, such that if these lifestyle-related risk factors are investigated and addressed, could lead to successful curtailing of  COVID-19.

Therefore in my view, suggestions by experts that the final and ultimate solutions to the  COVID -19 pandemic rest in development of an effective vaccine might be misleading and unhelpful to the public, as there is no guarantee that an effective vaccine will be developed and/or immunization might not be the best and most ideal intervention approach at all, in light of the fact that the pandemic is affecting mainly an unusual immunization age group (more serious problem in the elderly) such that most likely effective intervention might have to be those grounded on addressing potential lifestyle-related risk factors as suggested in the paragraph above.

Food for thought. Comments welcome. 

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