Cytokine Storm

( This virus kills us by our own ammunition – our cytokines. By the 10th day, antivirus drugs are meaning less because the virus may have long gone but the damage continues by proxy.)

( Our cytokines not the viral chemicals kill us.)

Cytokine storm is the biggest chemical warfare going on every moment inside the billion human beings.
The story is something like this.

Making of a simple scab:

We all know what happens after we have a small cut to our finger tip.
Our skin breaks, you bleed, the area turns red, and, eventually, it scabs over. 
No big deal. Except that sometimes the pain continues and then pus forms. Why ?

This every day happenings are not as simple as they appear to us. There’s an enormously complex system of cells, tissues, proteins, and hormones all working together to make a simple scab.

The ministry responsible for the scab formation is our Immune System. The soldiers in service of our immune system move in, surround the foreign element the moment it sets its vile foot inside our territory and then kill them. Sometimes the battle gets protracted. There are a lot of casualties on either side. Our soldiers swallow the enemies full and die. Their dead bodies are discharged out as pus points. We must drain them out for quick recovery.
So far so good.
..
Our immune system if competent enough, recruits millions of white cells (WBC) to fight the enemy. The ammunition in their arsenal is called *Cytokines.

These are deadly chemicals that can dril holes in a living cell and drain it dry or simply scald a living cell with their deadly chemicals preserved inside high security granules – Golgi apparatus.

Covid pneumonia is a self goal.

Now sometimes it so happens that our soldiers fail to differentiate enemy virus from our own cells and damage our own body.
The more subtle the enemy, the more self destruction it can cause to us.

For example, this Corona virus.

The virus takes one week to draw a camouflage over its own army. In the second week, its war game takes a complete U turn. In one of the deadliest shadow warfare, the virus manages to trick a large section of our own army to engage against our own lung tissue.

As a result, those who do not recover by the second week of Covid, usually develop pneumonia.

Covid pneumonia is a self inflicted pneumonia.

Unfortunately, the virus is long gone by that time- either vanquished by our defense or left because its job is over.

But our poor victim this time lands in Respiratory Distress. His oxygen saturation falls. Breathing hastens.
As the patient sinks, doctors raise both their arms: a deadly Cytokine Storm. All markers of inflammations CRP, IL6, Pro Cal are raised. No more anti virals.
The only antidote left with us is to cover the victim with steroids – the ultimate weapon.

This is an over simplification of Cytokine storm. Unfortunately, we don’t have any markers to label who of us will run into the storm.

We know that those amongst us who are past 60, Diabetic or having chronic health conditions will not be able to fight the virus.
But most unfortunately, sone young athletic boy who has a robust immune system, who was alright one moment, suddenly succumbs to the fiercest cytokine storm.

It is clear by now that this virus is very mild in comparison to all other coronaviruses ( Ebola, SARS ) that we have encountered till date. 85% of its victims remain asymptomatic. Over all mortality is very less.

But the sad picture of an young robust victim who seems to be on the road to recovery, suddenly deteriorating and landing on a ventilator makes it one of the most vicious and dangerous epidemics in the history of mankind.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any idea who among the millions will be its next victim. All our medical achievements fall flat at this one point.