40. Proving and Using the Mind in COVID

August 28, 2021 Minding Corona No Comments

Many COVID deaths may have been preventable with relatively little effort ― many more to come. Meanwhile, we DO have the means for proper research and management.

August 27, 2021

	Daily	Total
Cases worldwide	712.601	216.168.904
Deaths worldwide	10.015	4.498.140

The sentiment in large parts of the West

The sentiment is lately one of victory, with the vaccinatory cavalry at our side. It seems like a question of time for the enemy to be defeated. Well, to be more precise, the sentiment is shifting, migrating to “We’ll have to live with this.” People have become used to COVID.

There is less panic around. But there is more aggression ― for instance, between those wanting everybody to wear masks and those resenting masked dictatorship, between those wanting their life and those wanting to live.

Worldwide, there is nothing to celebrate.

Looking at curves from https://www.worldometers.info/:

Or take a country like Vietnam:

On top of this, there is the problem of hunger worldwide, with a large uptick due to COVID. According to the World Food Program (WPF), at present, “About 1 billion people do not have sufficient food consumption in low and lower-middle income countries.” From these, 155 million experience acute hunger requiring urgent food, nutrition, and livelihoods assistance. [https://hungermap.wfp.org/?_ga=2.41057058.1433576357.1630347282-559588549.1630347282]

Vaccinatorily

The developers of the vaccines seemed utterly amazed about the efficacy of their products in the initial studies. At the start, they thought about a level of protection at 50%, not 95% (meanwhile, apparently down to 75-85% for the best vaccines).

The high percentages are not astonishing from the hypothesis that this is a ‘stress virus.’ [see: “Minding COVID: a Different Story“] In the nocebo effect from the start, one can see the human mind in action. In this case, the same action can now be seen in the vaccinations as a diminishing of the nocebo ― in a way, the ‘placebo of vaccination.’ Put this on top of the reasonable 50%, and you may get 90% or more. [see: “What if COVID Vaccinations are 80% Placebo?“]

Meanwhile, there are ways to prove the influence of the mind on COVID progression, individually and in society. There are also ways to come into action based on this proof. The following enumerations are by far not exhaustive.

Three veins of proof

studies using stress questionnaires and salivary cortisol, for instance, when people enter the hospital (or even before)
studies using the AURELIS app
STAT [see: “Why We Need Serial Treatment Assumption Testing”] The ‘treatment’ in the case of vaccination can be replaced by ‘vaccine effectiveness.’ This can readily be rolled out even in an extensive study. Of course, no specific company will earn from this ― only the whole world, but that doesn’t seem to be enough.

How to use the mind in COVID

avoiding hyper-anxiety and panic
avoiding the nocebo of hammering on non-vaccinated state
using the AURELIS app preventively
using the AURELIS app at the time of symptom onset or later
the ‘usual protection’ (face masks…) also has placebo effects: How to heighten these?

About the disease, some data, and consequences

Three phases in COVID pathophysiology are distinguished:

early infection: day 0-9
pulmonary phase: day 9-14
hyperinflammatory phase: day 14-28…

The symptom onset lies at around day 5.

About the infectious period:

most infectious: day 4-9
still pretty infectious: day 9-14

Two consequences of these data

The infectious period lasts until the start of the hyperinflammatory phase. The peak viral load occurs on average at symptom onset and then steadily declines. As a consequence, the virus doesn’t care about the immune-inflammatory over-reaction of its host. Therefore, it doesn’t need to attenuate. The virus may become more dangerous to us over time. The delta-variant is an example.
The symptom onset lies some four days before the pulmonary phase (in 20% of patients), ten days before the hyperinflammatory phase (in 6% of patients). As a consequence, people may get into the COVID-whirlpool, which is most lethal, turbo-charged by nocebo.

Breakthrough cases?

For example, in Connecticut, a US state of 3.6 million people, more than 7,000 COVID breakthrough cases have been reported and 53 deaths until now, by far being driven by the over 75 population. [https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/coronavirus/public-health-officials-report-more-than-7000-breakthrough-covid-cases-in-connecticut/2570701/]

That is, relatively seen, not dramatic. However, this is not the corona season.

Transplant this to countries with deficient healthcare, quickly spreading strains, and lower vaccination grades and frequencies, and there’s a recipe for more disasters. We only don’t know where and when.

Parts of a recent email to several people

“As to COVID, with certainty, the mind plays a substantial role. We don’t know to what degree. No sound science has been conducted into this anywhere. I’ve tried to awaken people to this worldwide. Meanwhile, I’ve learned much about how mind→body is relevant in this domain and why people don’t see it (mind-body unity; conceptual-subconceptual; the ‘social nocebo’ of the global scale).

About vaccinations: They work (and I’ve written about how to deeply motivate people to get vaccinated), but we don’t know their placebo effect, thus also little about how and when this may tumble down massively. How dangerous this is!!! Variants may be used as an ‘excuse’ while also being what might suck out confidence ― therefore, the placebo itself. The initial vaccination studies were pretty flawed as I, together with some colleagues, have immediately brought forward through some rapid responses in BMJ. I also showed the flawed science about remdesivir half a year before the WHO (submitted to NEJM, not accepted). We showed in this that psychological factors were the probable explanation. Also, we published a rapid response in BMJ about the possible stress-factor in the British variant story, recently scientifically corroborated.

We are now at 16% vaccination worldwide, an already waning vaccination effectiveness, and daily +/- 10.000 reported deaths (more in reality). What I fear most are multiple vaccine-resistant corona strains being highly transmissible and increasingly adapted to younger ages. Anyway, we cannot be confident that, worldwide, the worst isn’t yet to come. My regularly updated book Minding Corona is at 340 pages, the product of +/- a year of ‘normal full-time,’ unpaid. I also developed a free app, available in app stores, to help people with symptomatic stress and that can be used in research. I did my due.

Nevertheless, COVID is a relatively small part of what’s at stake. Many more healthcare domains lie waiting, not to forget the progress of A.I. itself. We are at a crossroads towards a future of Compassionate A.I. … or not. See my book.”

Silence.

My worst-case scenario a year ago was that some million people would die from COVID. We’re already way beyond. Moreover, the worst doesn’t come through direct COVID mortality but indirectly through hunger, poverty, and desperation-fueled war situations.

Is this pandemic in reality (this is, not in an academic hide-out) going to take more lives than the one of a century ago?

Will psychological factors eventually show to have a large causal influence in this?