Thread by @Medical_Nemesis

How do you treat a viral respiratory disease with a fever such as flu or Covid if it presents symptomatically as flu? In old school conservative approach you don’t. It runs its course. You run the fever 2-5 days. You suffer body aches. By the end of first week you feel better. /1

Better but far from well. Residual symptoms and importantly fatigue remains for three weeks or so. It means rest and sleep. You eat a modest restricted diet. Don’t pop pills. Medically in the older people you would watch for secondary bacterial infection.

Important part is to start getting you up and out of bed, at first to go eat, then to take short walks outside. Air the room where the sick person is by opening a window several times during the day. /3

There is no need for “speedy recovery”. Being ill is a job. Taking adequate time to recover ensures robust health down the road. Cutting corners, being “smart” shortening the course of disease by popping pills will make you worse long term. /4

What does this all mean for the President? He is under pressure to perform and recover, to not appear sick for the normal duration of the illness because Americans forgot what it means to be sick in a normal and healthy way. It takes longer than we think. /5

Essentially the President doesn’t have the luxury to be sick. Being sick for the normal unadulterated course would be a better example to the nation than experimental treatments. /6

Nonetheless the President showed the nation what it means to live. Herman Caine did too. I mean both examples in a positive way. We make decisions and live the consequences. They are not bad consequences. They are what they are. Read Dying is not Death for Ivan Illich example. /7

Ivan Illich refused to be diagnosed and lived with what was suspected to be cancer. He didn’t do treatments because what was offered was unacceptable to him. Instead he lived. He was granted a good death years later. /8