You might be surprised to hear this: when doctors go on strike (and refuse to work), death rates fall by as much as 50%, even in a few short weeks.  The results are immediate and obvious: Funeral parlors empty out. 

Please, before you get angry at me if you think I'm bashing the very front-line people we are depending on for acute COV2 illness, take this with a grain of salt.  I'm a physician and am acutely aware of the risk I take when I intervene in someone's health.  Even the natural therapeutics I use could lead to harm.  A mere misunderstanding between me and a patient could do harm.  This is why I chose to be a Naturopathic Physician, because I'm too risk averse in this way and believe that I have a better chance of helping with a lower chance of harm when I use homeopathic and herbal medicines and energy therapeutics, and take extra time with each person if needed. 

Now ten years old, this well-referenced blog post does a better job than I can of illustrating this point: Doctors were the Third Leading Cause Of Death in the Developed World, and avoiding them results in less deaths.   In other words: less intervention led to better outcomes.  This amounts to about 250,000 deaths per year in the US alone. 

This is not because proper medicine is irrelevant and harmful, it's because much of what we receive as medicine is over-medication and unnecessary surgeries.  The drop in fatalities during a medical strike is evidence to me that most of the medical interventions forgone were unnecessary, and should have been avoided anyway.  This is usually where people point their fingers at a cynical profit motive.  I'll say just this: it's complicated. 

Doctors were the third leading cause.  Now COV2 is. 

COV2 is, right now, killing Americans at a rate of 250,000 people per year. 

As a collective, we are partnering with the first responders to find the most appropriate medical interventions for those folks who are most stricken with this illness.  We are all trying to understand the nature of this illness, and the most high-yield and safe ways to intervene.  Nobody deserves to die, or to be maimed, and I truly believe that solutions exist.  I would add that it is up to each individual, absent of medicine even, to do their best to prevent illness with common sense and positivity: maintain cleanliness, get fresh air and sunshine, get gentle exercise and restorative sleep, eat real food, smile and laugh a lot, dance, and play.   

How does this relate to the pandemic situation?  A large portion of healthcare workers and doctors are furloughed, clinics closed, and medical interventions of all sorts are being cancelled / postponed / reconsidered.  We should expect to see a decrease in "iatrogenic (medically-caused) deaths," which will add-up to a whole lot!   I propose we will also see a decrease in deaths we wouldn't have otherwise attributed to medicine, which would figure into "all-cause mortality."  

Emergency medicine IS necessary medicine, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Start now, start early: this message is for the physicians and the folks.  If we are seeing reports of natural therapeutics (which require no prescription) working, we should begin to incorporate them at the start (unless they're indicated for late-stage only, or if they're potentially toxic).  I would also like to picture a world where our hospitals begin to take more pragmatic and rational approaches to everything.  Rational medicine looks to you and me like common sense and doing what's safe first and effective second: vitamins, minerals, fresh air (you'd be disgusted to know how many hospitals and nursing homes have zero air purification), natural therapeutics, and cutting edge natural therapies.  If you've ever been to a hospital in Germany, to give a really good example, you'd be amazed how many natural therapies are used.  Adopting these therapeutics would not require any new inventions, except it would require a new "convention" and redefinition of "conventional medicine."   Solutions are out there already. 

I'll give you another example of how I see medicine in USA evolving: the Italian made SEQEX device that I use and endorse is not new in Europe, is classified as the highest tier medical device, what we call Class-1, and used in hospitals.  Right now there are hospitals in Europe using the Seqex in conjunction with other medical therapies to treat COV2, although it isn't publicized and I don't have a link for you.  (sorry. - if I do I'll come back and add it here.)  Here's the kicker: the Italian manufacturer has not been eager to try and get it FDA approved here because of the enormous cost involved.  Health Canada has approved it as a Class I device, and we can legally import it to the United States.   You can rest assured that you'll have the same device as is used in the hospitals in Europe (and in a very small way in Canada now).  If there's enough demand for it here in USA, perhaps Seqex Italy will bring it to us directly.  When our hospital system begins to adopt these effective and safe, sometimes non-specific and adjunctive / supportive therapies, expect to see SEQEX in the mix -it's that effective. 

There will be other environmental impacts that will reduce our medical burden: a reduction in diseases caused by pollution from burning petrochemicals.  This can't be discounted.  Air pollution from incineration and combustion contributes not only to acute and chronic respiratory illness (including a risk to COV2), but it also contributes to nearly every other degenerative condition we've looked at, like top-two killers heart disease and cancer, also affected are diabetes, childhood diseases, and also reproductive difficulties.  I would propose that less environmental activity will lead to less consumption in general, less "negative externalities" on the natural environment and life of all forms.   At the very least, our landfills will pile up slower. 

• We report as severe pneumococcal pneumonia in young and healthy patients exposed to NSAIDs as in older, more comorbid, and nonexposed ones. Nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug use may mask initial symptoms and delay antimicrobial therapy, thus predisposing to worse outcomes.

• Our findings suggest that NSAID exposure at the early stage of CAP is associated with a more complicated course but a blunted systemic response, which may be associated with a delayed diagnosis and a protracted course.

• NSAIDs use during acute viral infection is associated with an increased risk of empyema in children, and antibiotics are associated with a decreased risk. The presence of antibiotic-NSAIDs interaction with this risk is suggested. These findings suggest that NSAIDs should not be recommended as a first-line antipyretic treatment during acute viral infections in children.

• Our findings suggest that NSAIDs, often taken by young and healthy patients, may worsen the course of CAP with delayed therapy and a higher rate of pleuropulmonary complications.