Yes, but, what will you do when the Covid comes?

This post was originally published on Patreon. You don't have encourage the speculations of the likes of me, but if you want to try, please subscribe!   Every day on NZ twitter people are debating what they would do were they the Government about vaccine roll-outs, MIQ, lockdowns, DJ's, and any other thing they can think of that they have absolutely no influence over.

Maybe, like me, you're double-chipped, using the app, wearing the mask, and annoying AF. Maybe you're even boostered up the wazoo. Well done. But y'know what? You're probably going to catch covid. Even if you don't, someone you care about is going to, even if you no longer care about the unvaccinated except as targets of your spite.

And yet, what no-one is talking about, or better yet arguing about in order to straighten out, is what they're doing now to reduce their risk of taking up hospital space when that happens, and what they're going to do to make themselves feel better once they get sick.

The good news is that the symptoms of Omicron are basically flu symptoms - scratchy throat, muscle ache, fatigue, night sweats, no loss of smell of taste. These, apart from the cough, were basically the second shot vax effects for many people. And even for those hospitalised, the average stay is 4 days vs 8 days with Delta. But why go to hospital at all if you can help it? Some people - morons, mostly - posit a false dichotomy between government policy and personal responsibility. But in every area, these are on completely different planes and complement each other. You taking responsibility for your health eases the pressure on a government trying to help those unfortunates who can't or won't.

So without further ado, as they say in places where there is an oversupply of further ado, here are the things I do.

Firstly, I exercise regularly and keep the sugar, seed oil, and refined starch real low; another way of saying this is that I eat whole food (of the cheapest sort, e.g. eggs, mince, the fruit and vege in season), play frisbee or swim every day, and walk the dog. I get as much sun as I can handle, and will take vitamin D in winter, or after a while during the prolonged cloudy weather typical of much of NZ.

Secondly, I eat a little sauerkraut or yoghurt with my meals, or take a cheap probiotic.

Thirdly, I take some supplements - Clinicians Selenium drops (Sodium Selenite), around 150 mcgs (three drops) a day, and x4 if I think I'm coming down with an RNA virus. This works out at around $17 a year. The cheapest Zinc tabs from chemist warehouse, one a day, but mostly when exposure is likely.  The cheapest chelated magnesium in the supermarket, 150 mg, most days (but I was taking this already).

If I get sick or obviously exposed, I'll increase the selenium drops to 300mcg 2x daily and take Sanderson's ViraMax, a mixture of elderberry (great, works for flu), echinacea, (great, works for cold), olive leaf extract (olive leaf extract has never worked for me, ever), and andrographis (works very well for all viral respiratory infections, but has a rare side-effect risk of liver damage, probably in people with compromised antioxidant defenses). When I had the RSV last year this combo eliminated symptoms so quickly I wondered if I'd just imagined coughing, sneezing and snotting all over the place on the first day.

Maybe you have different ideas? Please discuss them here or in a public forum. More:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/readingroom/book-of-the-week-will-salad-cure-covid