Why does the government not give the public more useful advice on protecting themselves from Covid-19?

Open up any newspaper and you get full-page ads telling you to stay at home, practice social distancing and wash your hands. Such is the volume of these ads I suspect they are using it as a subsidy to the newspaper industry whose ad revenue has been hit hard by Covid-19.

It is useful to have simple messages repeated frequently, but after nearly a year of the same messaging is there anyone who does not know these rules by now? Could they not vary the ads with other useful advice?

Apart from the above, there are lots of other things you can do to get yourself safe from Covid-19 or lessen its impact if you are unlucky enough to get it.

Ventilation: Covid-19 is airborne. Advising people to open windows once a day for a few minutes to change the air is simple advice. Air quality in winter is an issue generally so this is good advice anytime. The HSE has an entire section on the issue.

Taking Vitamin D: There is lots of evidence that taking a Vitamin D supplement can help to boost your immune system and protect you for Covid-19. Vitamin D is safe to take and is readily available in most supermarkets or online. In normal times it is a good idea to take Vitamin D in the wintertime as we don’t get enough sun to produce it naturally. One issue is many experts thinking the recommended daily limit of 400IU is too low, you need to be taking 1000-4000 IU. I take the Vitabiotics ones, these are available in most shops for only a fiver for three months supply, they also do a 2000IU one. For kids, you can get a Vitamin D spray that is easy to take. You can also buy a simple home blood test to check your levels if you are curious. One other important thing is Vitamin D needs magnesium to work well, the Better You Magnesium spray is very good, Magnesium also helps you sleep.

Lose weight: Being overweight is a massive risk factor for Covid-19 patients. From a BMJ report:

In July Public Health England estimated that having a BMI of 35 to 40 could increase a person’s chances of dying from covid-19 by 40%, while a BMI greater than 40 could increase the risk by 90%.1 But why is this?

Stephen O’Rahilly, director of the Medical Research Council’s Metabolic Diseases Unit at the University of Cambridge, also speaking at the briefing, said, “Two things happen when obesity occurs: the amount of fat increases, but also you put fat in the wrong places. You put it in the liver and in skeletal muscle. And that disturbs metabolism. The key disturbance is that you get very high levels of insulin in the blood.”

This disturbance is associated with a range of abnormalities, including increases in inflammatory cytokines and a reduction of a molecule called adiponectin that directly protects the lungs, he says.

It’s also possible that fat increases in the lung itself, which may disturb how the lung handles the virus, he adds. “The simple stuff you read about—big chest, big bellies, et cetera—is all grossly oversimplistic. What is really going on is metabolic, and we know that because if we look at genetic markers for the metabolic disturbance they are much more closely related to the bad outcomes than genetic markers for obesity itself,” O’Rahilly says.

Now I know obesity is a complex issue involving social status and food environment amongst other factors. Many obese people are already likely to be very stressed so telling them they have a greater chance of dying from Covid-19 is going to increase this anxiety but on the other side, nothing concentrates the mind like a hanging. Giving people a clear incentive to lose weight might be the push some people need.

Poor metabolic health generally is a massive risk factor for Covid-19. This basically means being overweight, having a poor diet, not taking enough exercise, not sleeping enough and having too much stress in your life. Critics will complain about the government of being a ‘Nanny State’ but you can advise people on the facts and they can decide how they want to respond.

They could do a variation on the Take 5 campaign to give people simple tips on improving their lifestyle.

The state of public health generally in Northern Ireland is abysmal. The Public Health Agency should be using the pandemic to be more proactive in trying to improve the health and wellbeing of the public.

Only 2 per cent of the health budget is spent on prevention. Treating lifestyle diseases like diabetes, mild depression & anxiety, heart disease, smoking, drug and alcohol problems are costing us an absolute fortune. Treating diabetes alone is expected to practically bankrupt the NHS.

Our society is sick in many ways, we need to start a conversation about how we improve public health for all our benefit.

“‘Walking the dogs’” by Stevieboy55 is licensed under CC BY

Brian O'Neill

Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.