Keep Calm And Cope Better With Covid-19
Dr Alan Watkins
Dr Alan Watkins – physician, immunologist, neuroscientist and TEDx speaker – offers some information and reassurance amid the panic and confusion…
- If you have ever had a cold, you have had a corona virus. Covid-19 is just the latest version of the ‘common cold’. Not nice if you get it, but no reason to be alarmed for most of us.
- Worry and anxiety lower your immunity and resistance. They cause your body to produce the stress hormone cortisol, making it more likely that you will catch the virus.
- Staying upbeat will ensure milder and less severe symptoms.So when you find yourself starting to worry, do something to distract your mind.
- The death rate is misleading. It’s far lower than most people believe. Some are quoting a 3.5% risk of dying, which is simply not true. The number of recorded cases is probably at best 1/3 of all cases. So the death rate is most likely to be less than 1% – ie. the same as for every previous virus.
- Protect yourself by washing your hands and trying not to panic. These are difficult times, so practise patience and compassion for yourself and others around you.
Dr Watkins is also recognised as an international expert on leadership and human performance. He is the CEO and co-founder of coaching organisation Complete and co-author of HR (R)Evolution: Change The Workplace, Change The World. He continues…
These are worrying times. For the majority of us this is the first time we have experienced a global pandemic, and it’s hard to know how best to respond.
The challenges of Covid-19 or coronavirus are:
- medical
- immunological and
- psychological.
Fortunately, I have degrees in all three so I would like to offer a few, hopefully reassuring words.
At some point in our lives, most of us will already have had a corona virus infection. When you had a cold in the past this was probably a corona virus infection.
For most of us, it wasn’t that bad. It makes you feel rough for a few days and then you are fine. Covid-19 is just the latest version of this ‘flu-like’ virus, albeit a new variant.
The main thing I want to point out is that if you are worrying or feeling anxious about the possibility of catching the virus that worry will increase the risk that you do catch it.
How to protect yourself
Worrying and feeling anxious increases your cortisol levels (the body’s main stress hormone) and cortisol impairs your immune system, making you more susceptible.
So in addition to washing your hands often and being sensible about human contact, the biggest thing you can do to protect yourself is to not panic. Stay as positive as possible; this pandemic will pass.
One of the reasons people are getting agitated by this pandemic is the debate about its death rate. Some sources are quoting a 3.5% risk of dying. This is likely to be a significant exaggeration.
Don’t believe everything you read in the papers! Pic: iStockphoto
If you divide the number of deaths by the number of recorded infections, you may come up with a figure that high. But the number of recorded cases is probably a much smaller percentage of the actual cases – most of which are not officially diagnosed.
So when the pandemic is finally over I suspect we are likely to see that the death rate will be less than 1%.
That is still a very significant number, of course, and should not be taken lightly – but it is not as bad as many reports.
Most of the deaths are occurring in people with pre-existing disease. Most deaths are due to pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The latter needs ventilation, if severe, which is why the number of intensive care beds available in hospital becomes a relevant factor.
Staying positive really will help
If you do get infected, and many of us will, one of the biggest determinants of how long it lasts and how badly affected you will be is your cortisol level.
And what increases your cortisol and makes it more likely you will suffer more? Your panic and anxiety about the whole situation.
What decreases cortisol and makes any viral infection likely to be milder and less severe is lowering your cortisol by staying positive and upbeat emotionally.
Read something positive and uplifting… like My Weekly!
This is, of course, true for many diseases. The commonest predictor of one-year survival after a heart attack is whether the person has depression – it has twice the impact of smoking on heart disease.
If you do get infected, what makes you more likely to give it to others is your “viral load” (i.e. the number of versions of the virus running around your body). And one of the significant determinants of your viral load is cortisol.
So to make us less likely to infect others, we need to stay as positive and upbeat as possible.
That’s even if you catch the virus. It will pass.
Our emotional response
When facing a crisis, the first rule is to manage your emotional response to any problem. Do that before you do anything else.
Why? Because it improves your immunity, your health, your wellbeing and also your ability to think clearly about what you need to do.
The more you worry, especially to an inappropriate degree, the more you lower your immunity, the less resilient you become, the more contagious you become, the more ill you may become – and the more likely you are to make decisions that make it all worse.
Something we can all do
So we all need to dig deep and show some emotional resolve and leadership in the face of the current difficulties and encourage others to do the same.
To reduce suffering, we must work to lower our cortisol. This is something tangible we can do to help alleviate the medical, psychological and immunological problems of Covid-19.
If we need to work from home, we must not sit and worry or panic. We must remain positive and connected to each other. We must be compassionate and kind to ourselves and to those around us.
Dr Alan Watkins is a physician, immunologist, neuroscientist and CEO of the coaching organisation Complete. He is also co-author of the book HR (R)Evolution: Change The Workplace, Change The World, £22.99 HB, Routledge
