YOUR COMPLETE COVID BATTLE PLAN

Not everyone died from the Black Death, or from the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918—and many of us will survive COVID-19. But why do some of us die, and, more crucially, why do so many who are infected suffer long-term symptoms, even if they are young and seemingly healthy, and how do we lower our chances of ever getting infected in the first place?

Once infected, we can carry the COVID-19 virus for life, as we do the herpes viruses, which 95 percent of us carry, while 90 percent of people in the West carry the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which triggers glandular fever (also called mononucleosis) and drives multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

Doctors and health agencies were taken by surprise by the COVID-19 outbreak. Many had assumed that modern drugs and vaccinations had made viral epidemics a thing of the past. But infections are always with us and have become the major drivers of many big killers, from cancers and coronaries to dementia and diabetes.

Microbes in the fermenting gut trigger gut tumors and are a cause of psychiatric disease and arthritis. Neurological disease is one of the most common causes of death in the West, and all varieties have an