We lost vacations. We lost jobs. We lost the freedom to walk down the street without a face mask, freely, without the thought of imminent death looming over our heads. An 86-year-old woman lost 3 fingers. Broadway lost an actor; the actor, his leg; a baby, his father. A 10-year-old boy lost his hands and legs. We all lost something in the past year, some more than others.
(https://www.ejves.com/article/S1078-5884(20)30676-6/fulltext)
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/obituaries/nick-cordero-dead-coronavirus.html)
(https://people.com/health/boy-10-has-hands-and-leg-amputated-in-battle-with-covid/)
When we watch the nightly news, we see images of patients in the ICU hooked up to ventilators. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease. We get it. But what we do not hear much about are the amputations. Understandably, this is much too graphic to feature on family television. If COVID-19 is a disease of the lungs, then why are people losing their limbs? At the most basic level, oxygen enters the lungs and blood brings this oxygen to our body parts. At a more complex level, the spike protein of COVID-19 acts like a key and inserts itself into a lock called the ACE2 receptor. The ACE2 receptor is found on endothelial cells which line the vessels, that is, tubes where the blood travels. Once the key fits into the lock, it opens the door to a whole cascade of interactions. Endothelial cells get damaged. Inflammation is triggered. The blood vessel contracts to cordon off the infection. A platelet plug is formed. To get the picture, imagine you are driving in the Gardiner Expressway. Instead of four lanes, it becomes one lane. Everything slows to a halt. Each car is a red blood cell and in its trunk is oxygen. Now a truck dumps a mountain of fresh cement in the middle of the road. Traffic is clogged up (https://www.bleedingdisorders.com/about/how-blood-clots-coagulation)
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890509620311018?via%3Dihub).
From a layman’s perspective, it is incredibly hard to tell this story given that there are so many unknowns admitted by expert scientists themselves. So to translate this story in such a way that the general public can understand it on international news is more than enough to eat into the two-minute sound bite allotted to the story. And let’s be real here. Nobody wants to hear stories of children having their hands and legs amputated when parents are pleading for in-person schooling to resume ASAP.
In truth, the medical story of COVID-19 is a whole lot uglier than what we are generally exposed to in mass media. If only this harsh reality were explained in a non-technical manner, then perhaps people would think twice before congregating and tossing out their face masks just because the temperature warmed up by 5 degrees. Now is not the time to wild out. You have to ask yourself this question – is it worth losing 3 fingers over? A right leg? Both hands?
We all lost something this year. Now that we are rounding the bend for the first year anniversary of this global pandemic, undoubtedly millions out there feel like they really are about to lose it if it means having to live in COVID-19 oppression for another year, if not more. If ever you feel your self-restraint waning, think gangrene. Think amputation.
