Fever has a function.
• Paracetamol -Tylenol- Made This Pandemic Much Worse (Girardot)
In a not-so-distant future, I am quite convinced that the systematic use of Paracetamol during the COVID pandemic will be considered as one of the biggest failings in public health History, right behind the catastrophic COVID vaccines. Ancients used to consider fever as an indispensable ally in the fight against illness. “Fever is a mighty engine which Nature brings into the world for the conquest of her enemies.”said 17th century physician, Thomas Sydenham, also known as “The English Hippocrates”. Modern-day medicine focused on comfort – over therapeutic reason – has been systematically quashing fever for some time now, particularly during this pandemic.
I understand it can be scary to see one’s child feverish, but as long as it doesn’t become overwhelming (in time or level), fever should be embraced as nature’s defence at work. If evolutionary pecking order is a sign of therapeutic priority, and thus efficacy, fever is much more important than antibodies1. Too many view fever as a useless and painful by-product of the immune reaction, as if Evolution couldn’t have done away with such an incapacitating symptom. Let’s go back to basics here: “Fever-less people have been pruned from the evolutionary tree, only fever-prone people have survived.” Let that kick in… Another randomised controlled trial was held during millenia and fever – despite its painfulness and discomfort – held on and won. In other words, fever has to be an indispensable strategic tool in our fight against disease and suppressing it in a systematic fashion is as idiotic and foolish as suppressing the immune system.
What does fever do that is so important? By raising the temperature of the body and the acidity of the blood stream, fever likely acts as a systemic bomb impeding further infection and destroying all the circulating virions, putting an end to the exponential viral propagation early on. SARS-COV-2 sensitivity to temperature – as other corona viruses – is well documented. So while billions of immune cells go on a door-to-door guerilla, destroying one single infected cell at a time, liberating virions into the tissues and the blood stream, fever sends a systemic blast, similar to an immunity EMP bomb (for those of you who remember Ocean’s 12) that kills all circulating virions. As long as T-cells haven’t destroyed all infected cells, fever is required to stop the never-ending cycle of virus replication in the body.
[..] stopping fever is a recipe for disaster. Most healthy people who state they have had symptoms for 6-8 days (instead of 1 or 2) are people who have taken Paracetamol. Lowering temperature – and consequently acidity – is like tying your immune system’s hands behind its back. Circulating virions are let free for some more time to propagate and infect more healthy cells. Even if T-cells cut short virion production by systematically scuttling infected cells. Any virion left untouched by lowered fever will penetrate new cells and start replicating.
