Teach To Transform

This is a simple explanation as to how Covid-19 became such a dangerous highly contagious pandemic. This explains why, as an emergency medicine physician, we emphasize the importance of social distancing while medical protocols are developed.     COVID-19 This is a post from a respected Infectious disease doctor that gives a nice simple explanation of why COVID-19 is so contagious. Please take note as to why social distancing is so important as we have time to develop medical protocols. Feeling confused as to why Coronavirus is a bigger deal than Seasonal flu?  Here it is in a nutshell. I hope this helps. Feel free to share this to others who don’t understand. It has to do with RNA sequencing ... i.e. genetics. Seasonal flu is an “all human virus”.  The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system.  This means your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year. You get immunity two ways: through exposure to a virus, or by getting a flu shot.   Novel viruses come from animals. The WHO tracks novel viruses in animals (sometimes for years ... watching for mutations). Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1) (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once one of these animal viruses mutates and starts to transfer from animals to humans ... then it’s a problem. Why? Because we have no natural or acquired immunity. The RNA sequencing of genes inside the virus isn’t human, and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it so we can’t fight it off. Now .... sometimes the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human; for years the only transmission is from an infected animal to a human before it finally mutates so it can now transfer human to human. Once that happens, we have a new contagion phase.  And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, that’s what decides how contagious, or how deadly, it’s going to be. H1N1 was deadly, but it did not mutate in a way that was as deadly as the Spanish flu. The RNA was slower to mutate, and it attacked its host differently, too.   Fast forward. Now, here comes this Coronavirus ... it existed in animals only, for nobody knows how long ... but one day at an animal market, in Wuhan China, in December 2019, it mutated and made the jump from animal to people.  At first only animals could give it to a person ... but here is the scary part ... in just TWO WEEKS it mutated again and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientists call this quick ability, “slippery”. This Coronavirus, not being in any form a “human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity) took off like a rocket.  And this was because humans have no known immunity and doctors have no known medicines for it. And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus changed itself in such a way the way that it causes great damage to human lungs. That’s why Coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza. Coronavirus is slippery and it’s a lung eater, and it’s already mutated AGAIN so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain S and strain L ... which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine. We really have no tools in our shed with this.  History has shown that fast and immediate closings of public places has helped in the past pandemics.  Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918 and they were the hardest hit in the US during the Spanish Flu. Factoid:  Henry VIII stayed in his room and allowed no one near him, till the Black Plague passed ... (honestly, I understand him so much better now). Just like us, he had no tools in his shed, except social isolation... And let me end by saying ... right now it’s hitting older folks harder ... but this genome is so slippery ... if it mutates again (and it will) who is to say what it will do next.   Be smart folks ...

The love and compassion of the Gospel is different from the sounds of fear and anxiety created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The love of Christ can be heard above the sounds of worry and gives hope that transcends our understanding of a worldly view. It can be as simple as a whisper of loving-kindness that drowns out the noise of despair, isolation, and hopelessness. The storm that we are facing has us reflecting on the uncertainty of the things we put our trust in—jobs, health, or financial position. How do we bring more to the Kingdom in such trying times when we can’t leave our homes? We are all on the biblical timeline as our heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11:38, and our mission has not changed. Our mission as the body of Christ is to be a ray of light that gives hope and calm in the storm, at home and globally. God is performing miracles every day through those around us if we could only see through the eyes of Christ. What is our global strategy to continue working on expanding the Kingdom of God in times like this? It seems to me that Jesus’s model of medical missions is apparent in his answer to John the Baptist when he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the one. Jesus answered John’s question in Luke 7:22, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” Christ clearly links compassion through health care to sharing the good news. The question then becomes, how the Global North continues to support the Global South when they are faced with severe persecution or a medical crisis like the pandemic of COVID-19 and allow them to still be the beautiful feet of Christ. Have we limited our brothers and sisters who live in these dark spiritual places with limited access to medical care by our approach to missions that creates dependency? Through divine appointments, Teach To Transform, and other like- minded organizations have been blessed by a mission to empower national leaders with necessary medical skills to open doors for the Gospel. Who better to evangelize than a national pastor or evangelist who knows the language, the culture, and can witness long after we leave, breaking the cycle of dependency on the Global North? Why teaching? During a large medical camp, I had a divine appointment with a mother who gently handed her baby to me that had died during the night from a respiratory illness. What could we have done so this mother would have recognized signs of respiratory distress sooner? We have seen this scenario repeated over and over, mothers and babies dying during childbirth, starving, and dehydration in refugee camps, and the list goes on. What is the answer? In trying to make sense of this, we saw hope by empowering indigenous believers with medical skills to show compassion and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ through medical care. We have seen a glimpse of Heaven through training courageous national evangelists. Here comes Heaven, when we see Christ in the passion of Christians who travel six days on the Amazon River to get to our training. Here comes Heaven, when men and women travel days out of the Himalayan Mountains or Indian evangelists facing severe persecution come to be trained because of their passion for sharing the love of Christ. Here comes Heaven, When followers of Christ in Sub-Saharan Africa boldly face torture or death to love one another in the name of Christ. We have seen national evangelists trained in medical skills working throughout the world for the Kingdom despite our inability to go. Let’s not go quietly to heaven. Give the gift of your medical skills to empower nationals to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Download full ebook "A Healthcare Worker's Response to COVID-19" here