ah so the last time i saw you was last year back in 2020
so happy new year we're finally in 2021 for this one i'm going to break out the crystal ball so
here we go my first prediction is that we're going to have better medication to treat severe covid
so far it's been extremely frustrating that we don't have a great medication to treat patients
with severe or critically ill covid we do have dexamethasone which helps to reduce mortality but
it's far from a miracle drug so many therapies just haven't panned out there's convalescent
plasma remdesivir tocilizumab and so on but there are two drugs that come to mind that i think
will have a chance at improving mortality at least when it comes to severe covid 19 and that's what
i'm going to be talking about in some upcoming videos one of which is ivermectin and there's
a lot to say about that my confidence level on a scale of 1 to 10 for this prediction i'll go with
a 7. my next prediction is that this is going to be the best flu season in decades so masks
social distancing hand washing all of these are effective at minimizing the spread of influenza
as well as other respiratory viruses and it seems to me more and more people have been getting the
flu shot this year and so far the number of influenza cases hospitalizations and deaths
i've not had a single patient with the flu and don't know of anyone personally who's had
the flu but we'll have to wait for the official statistics to come out once the flu season is over
my confidence level on this one is a 9 out of 10. my next prediction is that vitamin d deficiency
will be much less prevalent in 2021 and beyond and that's because everyone and their mother has been
taking vitamin d since the pandemic started there are lots of studies showing that the people who do
worse with covid tend to be vitamin d deficient so how much of that is causation versus correlation
that's still to be determined regardless it's important not to be vitamin d deficient and on
a related note i do think that this pandemic will result in more and more people taking their health
more seriously so more people exercising eating healthier quitting smoking and getting better
sleep and it's great to see how many people have started working out in their homes or who started
running outdoors myself included at least it's been a long time since i did that so my prediction
of decreased prevalence of vitamin d deficiency in 21 2021 and beyond i'm gonna go with an eight
out of ten my fourth prediction is that doctors will be able to predict with a high degree of
accuracy which people with covid will develop severe disease we already know the general risk
factors for those who are at higher risk of having more severe disease so that includes older age
being a male medical comorbidities mainly the cardiovascular types of risk factors
such as obesity high blood pressure diabetes type a blood smokers but there are more and
more studies being done that can better predict severity of disease for a given individual this
takes into account specific lab measurements that are done when people have blood work at
the time of hospitalization now i've already done a video on this and since then there's another
study that's come out and i'll do another video on that as well so my confidence level on that
is going to be an 8 out of 10. my third prediction is that the vaccine will remain effective against
the new strain of sars-cov-2 the sars-cov-2 virus incurred some mutations and as a result it formed
a new strain of sars-cov-2 called the b117 variant it was first identified in the uk and
is basically everywhere in the world now and has been spreading faster compared to its counterparts
the mutations that it has incurred slightly altered spike protein now given the importance
of the spike protein in developing immunity it's a fair question to ask does that mean the vaccines
will be less effective against this new variant of B117 well preliminary data from the uk suggests
that the vaccines in use there remain effective and the u.s is conducting its own studies
the cdc provides updates on its website for all known coronavirus mutations and ongoing efforts to
sequence and understand their implications while sars-cov-2 is statistically expected to mutate
every couple of weeks or so most of the subsequent changes to the viral structure are minimal now
some other viruses like hiv are way more likely to have meaningful mutations on a regular basis which
is the big reason why an hiv vaccine has been so hard to develop so my confidence level for this
is 7 out of 10. now i'll be getting my second vaccination shot tomorrow the one from pfizer
my prediction is that my second shot will go smoothly just like it did the first knock on wood
even though side effects from the vaccine are more likely to occur in younger people i'm 40 say what
you will and they are more likely to occur after the second shot overall most people will not
experience side effects other than the sore arm for a day or two so hopefully all goes well and i
think it will and based on the statistics from the pfizer vaccine study published in the new england
journal medicine my confidence level is going to mirror that so i'm going to go with a 9 out of 10.
now related to this i also predict that i'll make a video on me getting the second shot
but not just another video it's gonna be a music video confidence for that nine out of
ten okay so number one my number one prediction is that the pandemic will be over by the fall
of course this mainly depends on the number of people who get the vaccine we need probably 80
or so the population to get it in order to reach herd immunity this also means we still need to
mask up in distance but before we get to the end of the pandemic we first have to get through the
worst of the pandemic which is january because of people traveling for the holidays christmas
new year's with indoor gatherings and parties and because of the cold dry air for most parts of the
country in the world and because the new strain that is more contagious january already is bad and
it's only going to get worse this past week we are seeing crazy numbers of coveted cases and deaths
in my hospital and this is going on throughout the country but i do think that as more and more
people want to get this pandemic over with and want to get the vaccine the numbers are going
to start to decline month by month and hopefully we can get back to normal times and i think fall
is a realistic possibility so schools theaters bars restaurants sports and concerts please
acdc guns n roses 2021 my confidence level on this is going to be a 5 out of 10. oh and a bonus
prediction here is i think the covert vaccine will be administered on an annual basis at least
for the next several years antibodies seem to at least last for six months probably a year but like
i mentioned earlier there will be mutations which means that there will be variants which means
there's a good chance that there will be a new vaccine every year like there is for influenza
the good news is that with the mrna vaccines from moderna and pfizer they can easily be modified to
accommodate new strains of the sars-cov-2 virus and my confidence level for this is a 6 out of 10.
so that's going to be all for this one but i have a lot of topics to get to this week
there's ivermectin there's the moderna vaccine with published results in new england journal
medicine there's the astrozenica vaccine that's now being rolled out in the uk and other parts
of the world so what topic do you want me to cover let me know in the comments and let's
make it happen ivormectin is an fda approved medication for parasitic infections ivermectin
is widely available due to its inclusion on the who model list of essential medicines