Association of COVID-19 Disease Severity with Transmission Routes and Suggested Changes to Community Guidelines

Abstract

In the war against the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is experiencing severe resource constraints. Although transmission routes are well understood, we suspect that they cause different disease consequences. We evaluate them in different forms to understand how they affect infection rates and disease severity. In determining how they affect disease outcome, we evaluated target tissue vulnerability, functional role, defense mechanisms, viral concentration, infection vicinity to target vital tissue, and host factors. We found that direct lung infection is the most lethal transmission route followed by bronchi infection. Transmissions by physical contacts, foods, and blood by low viral concentration (as expected in normal human activities) pose lower or much lower risks unless the infection is followed by subsequent lung exposures. After adding transmission route, treatment timings, and improper treatments into the list of known risk factors, we found that death rate and disability rate for young or healthy persons are nearly zero. We show that population based medical model improperly shifts nominal death rate from few vulnerable people to the population resulting in unnecessary population panic, and such panic is responsible for shutting down human activities and the world economy. Finally, we examined limitations in population-based mitigating measures and proposed for governmental and private adoption community guidelines, which are mainly to enable vulnerable people avoid exposures, prevent non-vulnerable people from serving as viral transmitters, get rid of high-risk exposure modes in working environment, improve safety for people in buses, ships and planes, and reduce death and disability rates for infected people.

Proactive Body Temperature Management Protocol and Lifestyle Interventions as Predictable Cures for COVID-19 Disease: Curative Protocols Discovered from a Century of Medical Discoveries

“…By acknowledging flaw of the binary approach, we proposed the reinfection concept [2][3][4], by which virus infected at one point in the respiratory track is discharged and spread to new locations through moving air inside the respiratory track, and is thus redistributed to uninfected cells within the respiratory track and lungs. We do not need to prove the validity of this concept by experimental data because viral particles that can be discharged outside of the body to infect other persons must be able to re-infect new cells within the respiratory track.…”

“…Before more powerful acquired immune response starts working, the body depends on the innate immune functions within the 4-6 days time window or several weeks for those with immune system compromised [311][312][313][314][315]. In the reinfection time window, the respiratory system is intermittently or repeatedly exposed to low temperatures or the body core temperature has caused vasoconstriction, uninfected tissues within the respiratory system are infected rapidly by the virus distributed by the dead air in each breathing cycle [2][3][4]. When the innate immunity is suppressed, spreading the virus to the entire respiratory system or a large part of the lungs must lead to the worst outcome.…”

“…In our last article, we extensively studied secondary effects of pandemic measures on global health [1] and we predicted that incoming cold temperatures and the secondary effects of the pandemic measures will be responsible for the worst global health crisis. That prediction was based on our prior works concerning effects of mask wearing [2], transmission routes [3], the roles of thoracic free volume on disease outcome [4], and personalize lifestyle interventions [5][6]. The current situation is serious because no existing antiviral drug has been found to deliver real benefits [7].…”

Investigation of work-related tension levels and related factors in healthcare workers

“…Blocking the transmission route between the focus of infection and the host may help prevent infection in both the patients and the healthcare personnel [7]. As in the current Covid-19 pandemic, the pathogens can remain suspended in the air and airborne viruses, or bacteria-infected droplets can spread when someone sneezes or coughs [8]. It is of great importance that the hospitals are kept clean so that patients, their relatives, and healthcare professionals can receive or provide health services in a cleaner environment.…”

Predicting the Epidemic Curve of the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Disease (COVID-19) Using Artificial Intelligence

“…There is no definite data concerning the transmissibility of the virus. However, several transmission routes have been identified including respiratory droplets/aerosols, direct contact with virally-contaminated objects, and possibly fecal-oral transmission [14].…”