More and more doctors and medical personnel directly dealing with COVID-19 are discovering that everything is different than we thought.
The Washington Post printed an article on May 10, 2020, entitled: “Doctors keep discovering new ways the coronavirus attacks the body.” The article gives an overview of what is being increasingly revealed about the deadly activity of the COVID-19 virus. Their article, repeated in the New York Times, is followed by links to a series of other articles that show shocking developments which challenge the original idea that COVID-19 is “only a severe respiratory problem”. The list includes:
- Coronavirus destroys lungs. But doctors are finding its damage in kidneys, hearts and elsewhere.
- Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes
- Children are falling ill with perplexing inflammatory syndrome thought to be linked to covid-19
- A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients
- Frostbite’ toes and other peculiar rashes may be signs of hidden coronavirus infection, especially in the young
An earlier stunning report that doctors were dealing with a different enemy than at first presumed came from an ER doctor at Montefiore Hospital in Brooklyn, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, who objected that ventilators were being misused, because the patients did not simply have a lack of oxygen in their lungs, but the lack was in the hemaglobin, in the blood itself. This was reported on April 6 in the New York Post; Dr. Kyle-Sidell was interviewed on WebMD. Thailand Medical News reported as well that “Findings from a new study released by Chinese researchers , Dr Wenzhong Liu from Sichuan University and Dr Hualan Li from Yibin University has revealed that the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus attacks haemoglobin the red blood cells through a series of cellular actions, that ultimately renders the red blood cells incapable of transporting oxygen”. Their article was refuted as referenced in the same article by Randy J Read, Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research.
An April 14th report in Science magazine provided a report with useful illustrations and graphics in an article entitled “How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes”. The article is linked here. On May 11th, an article first published in France reports: “Paris (AFP) – Every week, it seems, the list of coronavirus symptoms — ranging from disagreeable to deadly, from “COVID toes” to toxic shock — grows longer.” The report is linked here. https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-many-patients-reporting-neurological-111159993.html. This article suggests that a virus with this level of massive infection rate — including asymptomatic people — could be expected to have a certain percentage of more serious problems.
Still, we are all involved in a war being fought on unexpected battlefields: Strokes in younger people caused by blood clots; ventilators missing their mark because the low oxygen was in the hemoglobin, in the blood, not only in the lungs; an inflammatory crisis effecting children who are not positive for COVID-19, but who have antibodies showing they were positive at one point, and now, weeks later, undergoing severe illnesses. Patients dying from an intense attack on the body by a person’s own immune system — a cytokine storm — death by the effect of the illness on other organs. And do those who are no longer positive for the Corona-19 Virus ever recover from these other effects?
Let us consider the kind of international collaboration among medical experts that can further the dialogue towards a solution.
Update — articles on this topic:
Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing — The Atlantic, April 29, 2020
A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/
The Medical Project 