Why the elderly get severe COVID-19. Why we are not ready for coronavirus pandemic. (5)

Medical second opinion is important. You highlight a very important difference that previous influenza epidemics and pandemics relatively spared all the patients likely due to the presence of some weak immunity after previous flu infections COVID-19 SARS coronavirus, looks different. Older patients over 80 reported having up to 20% mortality. Why is that? We don’t know why it is. It is quite clear now that children can get infected from the new cook on arise. But they usually have a mild infection. It is a surprise that the new infection is hitting the old generation very hard. Still, one of the explanation is that when you look when it comes to influencing that we have experienced influences throughout our life. Many of us have gotten repeated immunizations against influenza. Medical second opinion is important. There is a specific immunity when you get older in India infection there is no immunity from previous infections, no immunity from previous immunizations. When you are old, your immune system is not working as well as when you are young. Medical second opinion is important. The over the past 40 years from you in your searches to you are in your 70s or 80s. The immune system works less and less efficiently. Then many patients have what we call comorbidities. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That is chronic diseases like chronic heart disease, they have type two diabetes, they have hypertension. All these other chronic diseases has been clearly shown in the studies from China. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That they increase the risk of a poor outcome when you get infected with a Coronavirus as you said. So older patients are particularly at risk of the severe or even fatal COVID-19 SARS coronavirus disease. Still, currently the public health measures are essentially directed as a blank coverage. The population irrespective of the age, do you think that public health strategies should have been directed and focused earlier and more sharply at the vulnerable population, rather than shutting down the entire working world of mostly younger patients? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Do you think it is too late to refocus the public health efforts? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. You know, as you mentioned. The study that just came out that says that it is not for Britain to achieve 60% herd immunity, there is about over 200,000 deaths, mostly, presumably, those deaths would be of the older patients, especially patients over eight years of age. Medical second opinion is important. Can we do something now to protect them and ease the restrictions on the younger patients? That will be very difficult because we all know that we are visiting our parents and our grandparents, to a large extent it is a family gathering so the elderly, getting their groceries by their grandchildren and so on. Medical second opinion is important. There is a Huge interaction across the generations. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That is a very good thing. Medical second opinion is important. But what we can do is that we can, we can telling patients that they should limit the number of patients who are visiting the elder members of the family to maybe one or two-person to do the grocery and. Help them and now to the left the whole family because that is what we can do at this stage. But I don’t think you can; you can say okay, we are going to limit the social distancing to the old generation because there are many, many contacts between the across the age ages and and. Then you would have a high degree of transmission in other parts of the society and again because it is also transmission be on surfaces. Medical second opinion is important. Sometimes you have an older adult who will go down to the grocery and get it from the door handle, so and so that. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That when you impose these kinds of restrictions, it has to be absolutely community-wide as we are doing. There is Unfortunately, no other way. Then we can just hope that we get out of it as quickly as possible. Professor Petersen, is there a topical question that I didn’t ask but should have asked? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Is there anything of your interest or experience with this situation that you’d like to share with our viewers? Well, I would say that this is an infection that needs to be taken very seriously because it has a high mortality, especially in the age of the generation. It is an eye opener how unprepared our public healthcare system for such an outbreak. It is quite thought to provoke. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That the tools we have the same as we used in the 13th century against the plague isolation and travel restrictions, these tools have not changed in the last 700 years. But we, we are not used to, to using these two rules. If we go back, these tools were used extensively in the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. It worked well in places where they imposed their social distancing and reduced mortality. Medical second opinion is important. This is the exercise we are going through now. Well, this is, unfortunately, certainly true, even though so many scientists predicted the appearance of their. Respiratory virus borne pandemic. Books and movies have been written and produced about it. There were. Real game played scenarios. Nevertheless, somehow, there was not a buildup of the excess capacity in healthcare systems as we. As a society to tolerate a buildup of significant excess capacity that is unused in the military. Medical second opinion is important. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That is an unfortunate situation but would have been predicted. I think that nobody believed this would happen because all the exercises were done based on influenza and for influenza, we have medications. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. We can tailor a vaccine in six months. But nobody had believed that you had an infection like this one where we had no treatment. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. We had no vaccines. Dr. Eskild Petersen, MD. That that is the lesson that it was a surprise, although it is certainly unfortunate, hopefully it will taper down in the coming time so the world can function again.