It’s never a good idea to self-medicate; doctors didn’t go through years of studying and housemanship just to get a piece of paper. They did it because they know what should go into your body.
But with COVID-19, fear overtakes logic, and now, someone has died from this fear.
Before that, let’s look at the context.
Situation in the US
Over in the US, the COVID-19 situation is so bad, they reported almost close to 10K new cases per day in the last few days.
In total, the country has 41,444 confirmed cases and 401 deaths.
And just for your reference, the country had merely 42 cases on 1 March 2020.
A bulk of the cases comes from New York, which now has over 20K cases.
Since 16 March, all the counties in New York have declared a state of emergency, and a stay-at-home order has been issued—schools have been closed since 16 March, and restaurants can only be opened for takeaways.
In other words, it’s like Malaysia lah.
And unlike Singapore whereby we know about new cases and developments via a daily MOH press release unless the ministers need to talk about something, Trump is addressing the nation almost every day, which you can watch on The White House YouTube channel.
So here’s the problem: like him or not, sometimes he said things that really should have been vetted by the experts.
The most powerful man in the world spoke about how COVID-19 patients can be treated: using an old and powerful malaria drug, chloroquine. According to him, it’s goody because it’s an old drug so it won’t need extensive testing, and can be available immediately.
While that is true, whereby even China is recommending it but cautioned doctors and nurses about its usage because it’s so powerful, it can kill a person in dosages as small as 2g.
After Trump praised the drug, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not endorse it (with Trump standing just behind him), saying that they’re “trying to strike a balance between making something with a potential of an effect to the American people available, at the same time that we do it under the auspices of a protocol that would give us information to determine if it’s truly safe and truly effective.”
Trump’s still loving it like how he likes his KFC with cutlery, but that could have serious repercussions.
Man Self- Medicate for COVID-19 Based Loosely on Trump’s Words & Died
A couple in Arizona decided to ingest chloroquine phosphate. Both in their 60s, the couple immediately experienced distress and the man died while the woman is now in critical condition.
Of course the question is: how could they have got the drug? Are they pharmacists or what?
No.
There are fish tank cleaners that has chloroquine phosphate, which share the same active ingredients as chloroquine (just as the name suggests). So in other words, the couple has ingested an aquarium cleaning product for the chloroquine in it.
It’s unknown if the couple has COVID-19, and the hospital has come out to say this: “Chloroquine, a malaria medication, should not be ingested to treat or prevent this virus.”
Reader Bao: But I’m really scared of the virus leh and I need to do something to relax
No worries. Goody Feed is here to help you.
Here are two key ways to fight your anxiety:
Meditation
You might associate this with religion but no: meditation works for everyone.
Other that studies that show it works, many people have sworn by it to remove anxiety and worries (i.e. false evidence). How would staying put for ten minutes help to calm one down, you ask.
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After all, you want to calm down the entire day, and not just for that ten minutes, right?
For some reason, when you clear your thoughts for ten minutes, that’ll somehow also clear some anxiety off your mind. Don’t ask me why; our mind just works like that. Even if it’s a placebo effect, it works because placebo is all about tricking the mind, isn’t it?
To meditate, simply go to YouTube and search for “meditation”—you can start slow with a one-minute meditation daily and slowly move on to longer meditation sessions.
Even after the COVID-19 outbreak is over, you can still keep this good habit because there would be more false evidence coming your way.
Set Aside Time for Worries
So you’re worried that your banknote is filled with COVID-19 virus. Or that the doorknob you’ve touched earlier has COVID-19 on it. You’ve lots of worries but you didn’t want to microwave your money or burn your hands, and you still need to smile to your nasty boss daily.
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Then set aside ten minutes for these worries while you go on with your life. Let’s say you started to think about the doorknob—just tell yourself that you’ll worry about it at 8:15 pm tonight, and go on with your life.
Even if you do remember to worry about it at 8:15pm, you’ve only given yourself 10 minutes to let those false evidence to appear real. Then at 8:25pm, you can go on to watch Crash Landing on You or just go to sleep.
Experts call this a “worry period”, and it’s recommended to set it at the same place at the same time every day. You’d be shocked at how well this works.
Now, before you accuse us of giving tips that don’t work, try them first—because we’re confident they do work.
