Debunking Covid-19: Theories And Future Prospects

As a teacher my first love remains teaching but I have another passion and my love for majestic forts is indomitable. I often use them as analogy in my teachings and derive the concept of a fort as metaphor for understanding our body’s immune system. Akin to the various layers of cordons of a fort, our body too has various levels of defense mechanisms to combat the invading pathogens. To make it more easy, we have our skin, saliva, tears, vaginal secretions as our first level of defense, then we have cellular cells like leukocytes, macrophages and neutrophils which when encounter any foreign particle, engulf and eat it, marking them as second level of our defenses. Finally, like the last atop of the fort which takes some effort to reach and most of us just abandon the steep climb midway, only few of the macrophages and dendritic cells carry certain portions of the foreign particle to be recognized as an outsider by the third level of our defense system which comprises the B and the T-lymphocytes or when we say the B-lymphocytes start producing antibodies against the pathogen and T-lymphocytes kill the infected cells or viruses.

- Dr. Soma M. Ghorai

Herein, I must mention that SARS-CoV-2 has been eternally present within human population and has shown its presence via the common cold and flu; we mostly get every season. So, why is this COVID19 wrecking such havoc on human lives now? And why is there such paranoia and one-upmanship on designing on its vaccine?

Ironically, I usually tell my students that if one takes medicines for flu, he gets cured by the end of a week and if not, it takes seven days for him to recover. Now, this may seem rather baffling to many. This is where one should understand that dealing with viruses is not easy and taking antibiotics will even worsen the situation as it kills the good gut bacteria and increases the chances of secondary infection.