December 1940. Hitler had finalized his plans for Vichy, France, the German invasion of Russia and the invasion of Greece. Dionne Warwick, Frank Zappa, Richard Pryor, Nick Buoniconti and Phil Ochs were born. In Oxford, England a police constable named Albert Alexander was tending the roses in his garden. He was scratched on the face by a thorn from one of the rose bushes. The scratch did not heal but became infected with both strep and staph. His face became covered with abscesses. The wounds festered and he eventually had to go to the hospital where the physicians needed to remove one of his eyes.
On February 12, Constable Alexander was given an IV dose of a new medication called penicillin. He was the first human being to be treated with this new medication. Within 24 hours his fever had dropped, his appetite had returned and the sores on his face had begun to heal. After 5 days of treatment, the staff ran out of the new drug and stopped treatment. On March 15, Constable Alexander died.
As we know now, a 10-day course would most likely have cured him.
Although he was clearly recovering, stopping the medication too early resulted in the reestablishment of the infection and his death.
INFECT: “affect (a person, organism, cell, etc.) with a disease-causing organism”
Warning: The following paragraph may be upsetting to many.
There are many organisms that can infect humans including molds, yeasts, fungi, parasites, prions, worms, protozoa, bacteria, viruses. It is amazing that we aren’t always infected with something (we probably are!)
There are treatments for many of these infections, but it is critical to remember that treatments that can cure a disease resulting from one type of organism will NOT WORK on another organism. Treatments for molds will not cure parasite infections; cancer chemotherapeutic treatments will not cure yeast infections; and antibiotics active against bacteria will not have any effect on viral infections. Taking azithromycin (Z-Packs) will not cure COVID-19 no matter how many charlatans push it. The only advantage for using antibiotics like azithromycin during viral infections would be that those antibiotics may help prevent opportunistic bacterial infections that arise on top of the existing viral infections.
But as Constable Alexander learned, if you do not continue the treatment until the cure is complete, you risk exacerbation and far more serious outcomes.
“Treatments” for viruses are very, very limited. We have few chemical agents that can assist the body in fighting viral infections. Regarding COVID-19, scientists are trying to find therapeutic agents, not agents that can cure the disease, but ones that can reduce the severity of the disease and its lethality.
There are only 2 real treatments for viral disease; the first is vaccines; the second is isolation.
Vaccines for COVID-19 are in development, but won’t be available for several months, and there is no guarantee that they will work or if the protection will last for months or years. Even after a vaccine is proven to be effective, production, distribution and inoculation will take additional months. And please, please remember that even after you are vaccinated, you will NOT be protected against infection for at least another month. Do not be fooled into thinking that the day after a vaccine is approved, that you will be safe. You will need to find a place that has gotten vaccine doses, you will need an appointment to get the vaccine, and after you have been vaccinated you will need to wait at least another month before you have any protection. And that assumes that a single vaccination will be sufficient. In many cases it is necessary to have a booster vaccine after the first, and that booster cannot be given immediately; generally one must wait months after the first vaccination to get the booster.
The best, safest and simplest treatment for a virus is to isolate the virus.
We have learned many things about this virus; one of the most important is that the virus is not well transmitted from surfaces. The majority of infections are transmitted through the air via droplets. This makes our ability to deal with infections far easier.
Think of it this way. Consider a community of 100 people, in which 5 people were infected with the virus. No one goes into or out of the community. If everyone in that community only goes out in public wearing a mask, then NO ONE who was carrying the virus would be able to transmit it to another person, whether the individual knew they were infected or not. Within a few weeks, as those who were infected worked through their disease, developed antibodies and stopped shedding virus the virus would disappear. No one else in the community would have been infected; those infected would have recovered (or, unfortunately may have died).
Our national community is the entire country. If we followed the example above, we could eliminate the virus within a few months. But we don’t follow that example. More than half of the people in this country are going out in public without masks.
The lessons of Constable Alexander have been lost. Rather than staying with the treatment until the viral infection was under control in the public body, we discontinued treatment. The result is an exacerbation in the infection and the cure now is becoming more difficult.
THERE IS CURRENTLY NO SECOND PHASE OF INFECTION
There is no second phase of this infection yet because we are still in the FIRST PHASE! We have not seen a reduction in infections to a nominal level followed by new outbreaks; we have seen a relatively consistent infection rate with a variation in geographic locations of peaks and valleys. If and when we pass through this first phase, as New York is beginning to appear to have done, we can maintain a low infection rate if we continue to wear masks. If we don’t continue to wear masks after infections drop to near zero, we will then absolutely see a second phase.