Anxiety is caused by our brain receiving information and if perceived as a threat it will result in triggering the so-called fight-flight response. Treating anxiety requires as well an understanding why we get anxious in the first place.
We can see on the panic purchases in supermarkets over the recent weeks that we all became victim of anxiety.
I remember a supermarket manager telling me that people bought so many perishable goods that most of it will never be eaten and 60% will be wasted. This customer wasted 60% of his money due to anxiety.
Most of this anxiety is driven by media reporting often one-sided information (I will get to this later) which results in triggering our survival instinct.
The down side of the survival instinct is that we can’t think “rationally” anymore – physically our survival brain is split second faster than our rational brain.
When we don’t think anymore our decision making can be manipulated! In the example above, the customer bought more than he could ever eat!
Let’s focus on the worst-case scenario – we are dealing with a real-life threatening situation! Hypothetically, let’s assume you are becoming sick of the corona virus so you we want to know
1. What is going to be the best possible treatment plan
2. The probability to get the best possible treatment in hospital
Health as disease is a dynamic state and we can influence our health through positive thinking and taking action to stay in control rather than submit to passiveness which ultimately leads to anxiety. The worst-case is explained in order to be clear why you want to avoid it but as well to take away the uncertainty and anxiety about the process itself.
The worst-case scenario:
You are admitted to hospital with serious health problems. As a result, you are isolated from your family as you are in an intensive care unit (ICU). In a serious situation you want to have three things in hospital the appropriate care, the right equipment and ultimately a hospital bed.
Care
We know that nurses and Docs are working hard and are fully stretched in their capacities and some getting retrained as the demand on lung problems increased significantly.
A problem in the short- and long-term is that hospital staff is catching the virus or become exhausted as numbers of trained staff is limited.
Additionally, there are no or not very effective measure in place to protect staff – accelerating the deterioration of the available staff. Although homeopathy could help in terms of prevention and anxiety - believe pattern in medicine are still stronger than a common sense approach of getting the best possible protection!
Equipment
In the case your health deteriorates the best possible treatment plan in the case of lung and heart problem (which is very common with extreme corona virus cases) is that you are placed on ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) because you have serious, but reversible, heart or lung problems.
The machine (ECMO) takes over the work of the heart and lungs by oxygenating your blood. This gives you a chance to recuperate.
The ECMO allows you to survive whilst without you would not be able to survive as you body wouldn’t receive enough oxygen. The plan is to keep you for 14 days or longer on the ECMO and hope you will get better.
Access to hospital beds:
This is the basic health provision to our society and differs from country to country and region to region within each country. Access to hospital beds depends on the concentration and availability of hospital and its population in a given area. The table below shows the ten European countries with the largest amount of corona virus infections. The overall consensus is that Italy is 2-3 weeks ahead in terms of development of the infection of the corona virus which might explain the huge number of deaths.
The table is ranked by the lowest mortality rate and it seems that the number of hospital beds and access to ECOM units could improve the mortality rate. Austria and Germany have almost 3 times the amount of hospital beds compared to the UK.
However, the number of deaths does not take into account country’s differences in account for corona deaths and delays in data collection. It does not tell you how data collection is done, what technologies are used, how efficient or inefficient it is, the degree of error, differences in policies and systems. Who is making sure we compare the same data sets? Simply speaking is a terminal ill cancer patient accounted as corona or cancer deaths?
Is data collection encouraged or discouraged by health care politicians and how effective and efficient is data collected?
Additionally, the corona death number doesn’t tell you to what extend people had already chronic diseases, exposure to 5G radiation and toxicity, impaired immunity due to life style choices drugs, homelessness etc.
Table: Corona virus mortality and hospital beds
Source: worldometers/info/coronavirus; Eurostat, Curative hospitals in Europe 2017
In the table above we can see that UK has one of the largest mortality rates and unfortunately one of the lowest number of hospitals beds per 100,000 habitants.
As I mentioned above the number of hospital bed can make a difference and, in the moment, it seems the UK is worse off than many of the other top ten countries in the table.
This is scary and for those people who are vulnerable a real health concern as we see and hear from overstretched capacities in hospitals. Hence, isolation will stop the spread of the disease and limit the amount of people requiring a hospital.
Hence, PREVENTION remains the best protection!
Does the worst-case scenario affect the majority of the British population?
The answer is NO!
Here are 7 good reasons not to be anxious:
1. Most corona cases are mild and require just a bit longer to recuperate.
2. It does affect only a very small percentage of the population
3. We are going into the warmer season and end of April is normally considered the end of the flu season (based on previous corona type viruses such as SARS).
4. We take care of our elderly and cocoon them (isolated them and supply them with what they need, physically and mentally ie skype talks, phone calls and so on)
5. We call our friends, family members to make sure they are physically and mentally in a good shape
6. We spend more time with our family or if separated we call more often and realise how little we need to be happy and content.
7. We are helping our neighbours, even neighbours we have never spoken to before.
You are still anxious about the fear of death and the increasing numbers of deaths? You are checking the numbers every day? - Well STOP doing it if it makes you anxious!
Comparable information
Let’s look what the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is saying about seasonal influenza.
The European Centre for disease Prevention and Control states that every year 4-50million European get infected by the flu and that we have EVERY YEAR 15000-70000 DEATHS IN EUROPE RELATED TO SEASONAL FLU.
This is compared to current 9764 death based on the 10 leading European countries of 23/03/2020 relatively low.
So with warm weather coming we would expect that we probably won’t hit the seasonal flu mid or top range of mortality numbers.
Table: Fact sheet about seasonal influenza
Understanding the role of media in generating anxiety:
Media companies have worked out that they make more money by reporting bad news hence the information is manipulated to generate anxiety.
In the moment this is achieved by not putting numbers in context, we see nowhere comparing death rates to previous year’s death rate or numbers from the current flu season. Context allows us to assess if something is significant or not – this is unfortunately not provided.
As a result, we are bombarded with negative one-sided anxiety generators:
1. Images of military moving to London, to Florida, into Paris
2. Overfilled hospitals, desperate people, overfilled morgues
3. Death rate moving up without putting the number in context ie how current death rate would compare to previous years. (That’s what companies do in their financial reporting comparing the like for like number to the previous years! So management have a real understanding if things improve or not!)
Coming back to my previous point about understanding anxiety – these anxiety generators are here to make sure you don’t think rationally as anxiety does not allow you to access your rational brain – since our survival brain is split seconds faster than our logical brain.
As a health practitioner, working in my profession, working in a pharmacy and for charities I see great work from people in various parts of the society. These stories unfortunately will never be told but these are the real stories, and they are extremely positive!
I tried to explain how we feel anxious and how to avoid it. How information is manipulated and in turn its perception is manipulating us. Becoming more aware of those anxiety traps will help you to avoid them.
However, if all this information didn’t work for you please take the homeopathic remedies below which have shown million of people relieve due to their unique ability in addressing fear and anxiety:
In the case you get overwhelmed please use
1. Aconite 200C, if you are shocked and feel fearful and anxious
2. Arg-Nit 200C if you fear you are having a panic attack
3. Arsenicum Album 200C, if you feel fear of death
Once you have taken the right remedy above please read the article again, because if you learn to avoid anxiety you boost your health in one of the most amazing ways.
Take care - stay positive