Covid-19: Why young people should take the same precautions as elderly - Dr Pasano Bojang

As covid-19 continue to kill thousands of people around the world daily, Dr Pasano Bojang has advised the young people to take the same precautions as the elderly to protect themselves from contracting the deadly virus.

Dr Bojang‘s advice came on the hills of believe that young people are invincible to the covid-19 virus despite recent data that shows the virus killing indiscriminately including a 5 year old child.

Below we reproduce the scientific arguments by the learned doctor for the young people to do everything to protect themselves from getting infected with the covid-19 virus:

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Why our Young People should take the same Precautions as our elderly and immunocompromised individuals (People with preexisting conditions/illness).

1. Level of ACE2 receptors express in our lungs. This is the way the conv19 virus use to enter the lung. How much of it you have can determine the amount of virus that enter your lung. As a young person, if your amount is higher, a lot of the virus can enter your lungs and overwhelmed your system. In such a scenario, a younger person can die of conv19 infection just like an elderly or the immune compromised.

2. Your level of surfactant. Surfactant is the protein that lubricate your lung for you to breath easily (expansion and contraction of the lungs). Lack of surfactant protein makes breathing difficult or labored because your lung tissue become hard and difficult to compress. Because again people have different levels of this protein, canv19 infection and the severity of the diseases can be severe in the young with less of this protein.

3. The effect of conv19 virus on surfactant/ACE2 proteins level/amount.

Current research also suggests that when conv19 enters your lungs, it reduces the expression of certain genes to increase its infectivity. So even if you have normal level of surfactant, if conv19 reduces its levels (expression/amount), you can get it trouble very quickly. Infact it is believed that when Conv19 enters your lungs it’s in turn reduces the level/amount of ACE2. You ACE2 is responsible for attenuating vasoconstriction, sodium retention and fibrosis. So if this protein is loss, these processes goes on unabated. Infact, this is the main way/mechanism through which the virus caused lung injury.

4. Hyperactive immune system. For some of us, our immune systems are very active and when we have an infection, our immune system will over react to the extend that it can damage our own organs. In such cases the immune system continue to fight even after the infection is cleared however in this case against its own. In some cases, viruses will make protein that look like your own protein (molecular mimicry) to fool your immune system to attack itself. Just to put it in perspective, Hyperactive immune system is the reason some of us have severe allergies or are allergic to more things than the average person.

Because doctors are not able to pre-screen you for these factors, ITS BEST NOT TO ASSUME THAT THESE VIRUS DOES NOT AFFECT YOUNGER PEOPLE.

Please be careful out there and take all the precautions necessary to keep you and your loved ones safe. I hope I am not too technical.

Photo: Scientist Dr Pasano Bojang, Jr