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After the coronavirus began to take on unprecedented proportions and to attack the whole world, people understandably started to experience an accumulation of fear about their health as well as their very existence. Those fears are further reinforced by the constant reports about the new disease that are lurking at us from every side. However, regarding the attention paid to the virus, Slovak physician Zuzana Pitoňáková believes it is really exaggerated and that we should dial it back.
It’s been almost two months now since the coronavirus became the number one topic.
While at the beginning the people in Basel, after receiving information about the new disease, anxiously awaited what would happen so we could avoid the scenario from Italy, today many view the situation differently and hold the opinion that the fuss around Covid-19 is seriously exaggerated. There are, after all, much more serious illnesses that the pandemic has overshadowed.
„In Slovakia an average of about 142 people die daily, of which up to 103 are aged over 65. Of that number, 8 people die daily of lung cancer. That’s 246 patients per month. About 63 people die daily from cardiovascular failure in our country, so monthly that’s 1,900! And now imagine if we reported those deaths every day the way we do in the case of the coronavirus,” the general practitioner for adults Zuzana stated bluntly in an interview.
„I recalculated the mortality percentages based on the number of cases. When we compare the numbers of deaths from diseases that are part of our everyday reality with the data on the number of deaths from COVID-19, we find that they are incomparable,” she added.
The doctor thinks the attention paid to the coronavirus is exaggerated.
As a result, patients with serious diagnoses can be pushed to the sidelines, because many doctors are not practicing as before.
„Healthcare is going down the drain. And that seems to me to be a much greater risk,” she expressed her opinion.
Pitoňáková believes it was right to arouse fear in people at the beginning. Precisely because of that, as a nation we began to approach the disease consciously overnight and thus avoided the catastrophe that befell Italy. But too much of anything harms, and that applies in this case too.
„Long-term stress increases cortisol levels in the blood and thus lowers immunity. Therefore I think it’s time to abandon that panic and begin returning to normal. Fear was useful at the start and thanks for it. But now we should stop feeding it,” she revealed openly.
