Red Cells

No, this blog entry is not about the fellow-traveler groups (red cells) that Bernie Sanders was likely befriending throughout his “Democratic Socialist” life ... it is about hemoglobin ... the red blood cells that carry oxygen in our blood. The thinking is evolving that COVID-19 is starving our bodies of oxygen not so much by what it does to our lungs ... but what it does to our blood. Maybe this is why ventilators have such poor recovery results?

A close friend of my son is a radiologist in Maine ... and he told my son that this new coronavirus theory is circulating in the medical community. And that is that this virus is somehow affecting our red blood cell’s ability to carry oxygen throughout our bodies ... and that is why many so afflicted walk into Emergency Rooms with oxygen levels in their blood as low as 70 ... whereas anything below 93 is considered medically serious.

Now, here is were I, like Trump, get medically loopy. But, nevertheless, some of the following connections are intriguing.

Many blacks in Africa suffer from sickle-cell anemia (less so in the U.S.) ... where their red blood cells are deformed ... which is good and bad. It is bad in that these red cells carry less oxygen ... but it is good in that it helps them combat malaria. Now the malaria parasite does affect red blood cells in their functioning. If COVID-19 does also in a similar way, is this why the anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloquine may be helpful under certain circumstances?

It is easy to condemn such unstudied speculations ... but it often is such out-of-the-box thinking that presages breakthroughs. Let’s keep our dialog and minds open, OK?