Although they have backtracked, I heard both Dr. Mercola and Dr. Drew insist the Covid-19 infection would be no worse than the flu. They missed the fact, the novel coronavirus is much more intelligent than the influenza virus. In three specific ways it renders our own immune response very inadequate to do its job, and is much more deadly. It sneaks in stealth and is an established infection before your immune system even knows it is there allowing you to spread it. There is the dry as a bone constant cough, and missing the protection of mucus as it invades furiously. Except now runny nose is a feature and 40% f the time, a productive cough. As the human body tries to outsmart it, it succeeds in outsmarting us. The flu is in your respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, but COVID-19 goes where it wants, invades deeply in the human body, in addition to attacking the upper respiratory tract, lungs, and gastrointestinal it also can attack the heart, kidneys, pancreas, gall bladder, and the blood vessels creating blood clots and rashes and last but not least and most importantly it is also attacking your thyroid. Usually COVID-19 infection is accompanied by a low-grade fever instead of a whooping fever to turn on your immune system as usually occurs with the flu. Sneaky. Stealth. Deadly. Changeable.

My journey with the beast started with a sore throat, not too bad for a day, then an occasional cough, which I misdiagnosed as allergies, during the last days of February. It made its dramatic appearance almost 8 days later when I sat straight up in bed at 3 am with a coughing fit, on March 2. “What in the world is this,” I asked?” I was working in a cannabis clinic helping people obtain cards to legally use cannabis as a medication, something I support 100%. So in a small office room, I sat across a desk from patients, some of whom are seriously sick. As a matter of fact, cannabis patients, while many of them are healthy, they include the opposite of the spectrum, they are the sickest, and have cancer, degenerative and autoimmune diseases.

When I came down with COVID-19 I was embarrassed, I thought I was as healthy an almost 70 year old as I had encountered. I was under an illusion, because I forget to include the word novel in my thought processes, the novel COVID-19, which means brand new and never seen before. It meant my immune system didn’t give a damn and no matter how many colds and flues I had been exposed to, or had in a 69 year life time, it would not recognize this killer bug for 8 days until the alarm bells went off and it was deeply entrenched in my lungs (incubation can be 1 to 14 days). It knocked me down and I was bedridden for 5 days, from beginning to end it lasted 35 days. In retrospect, having read the horror stories from other victims including health care workers, younger than myself, I noticed there were a lot of things I knew not to do and things I did that I believe helped. I’ll share them here.

Much of my urgent care work, and in the old days, emergency room work centered on treating people who had a cold or flu. I used my sizable 30-year experience of treating flu and colds to treat my own infection and the first rule has always been, GET OUT OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM’S WAY. Do not interfere at all. Get it? Boost it. I will explain. I followed the advice I would give a patient according to what patients have taught me. I realize now I spent 30 years advising patients on the fastest way out of a viral infection.
Like many doctors in the same line of work I could treat 1000 cases of influenza a season, and I didn’t contract it. I hadn’t had a cold or flu in 12 years, and that is bragging rights, because I was an urgent care doc for much of that time. The first and last flu vaccine I got was the 1976 President Ford initiative to inoculate the entire country. I was dragged by friends to a basketball auditorium in a frenzy of their fear, and I, while resisting to the last moment, was able to overcame my desire to flee the scene and was inoculated. It was the same vaccine that caused a case of Gillian Barre Syndrome, Acute, Inflammatory, Demyelinating Polyradiculopathy for the author of “Catch 22,” Joseph Heller, who then wrote “No Laughing Matter,” about his paralysis due to an auto-immune attack in his own body caused by the vaccine. Then he improved and married his nurse.

As regards my generally held belief regarding vaccines and autism, I believe the limited research which points to maternal hypothyroidism as the cause of autism and the more accurate explanation and this part I make up, when these hypothyroid babies are vaccinated they are too inefficient to clear the vaccines effectively and are negatively affected. Otherwise, like a lot of hypocrites, I think vaccines are fine for others but I’m glad I wont have to get the COVID-19 vaccine because I already have antibodies to it. I supposed, but not so straightforward.