As the world is facing its worst crisis in decades, with Covid-19, one scientific fact that is coming up regularly is the fact in those who contract the disease and become serious, it is our own immune system that ‘overreacts’ and produces what is medically known as the ‘cytokine storm’, which leads to severe lung damage and damage to other organs, often resulting in death. Apart from the virus affecting the tissues directly, a large portion of the problem is our own immune system. If our immune system is weakened and under reacts, then the virus easily gains a foothold in our bodies, and causes havoc.

This commonly happens on those people who are immunosuppressed, like cancer patients, patients on anti-malignancy medications and long term steroids, patients of HIV, and those with immune deficiencies of any cause. The other end of the spectrum of seriousness and fatalities, are those whose immune systems overreact. So, we have essentially 2 categories of people who are at high risk—the under reactors and the over reactors.

While medically many things are being done to manage these cases, today’s discussion is not about medicine or science.

Today’s discussion is about how the immune overreaction is only the final arm, the final manifestation or end-point, of a consciousness which is prone to overreaction. We are all prone to over react or react out of proportion to the situation, many a times. While some are naturally more accepting and calm others get triggered and overreact at the drop of a hat. Anything from noise, to light to smells, to overcrowding to dirt, to pollution, to corruption to injustice, from heartbreak to rejection to bad behaviour–basically, a whole lot of things in the physical, mental and emotional arena make them over react, with anger, with sorrow, with grief, with withdrawal, with frustration, with guilt, with fear and with victimhood.

Combatting Covid 19 is about maintain an equilibrium, a harmony. We need to neither under react emotionally nor over react. This would translate into a physical manifestation of a balanced immune response. As we have seen, an under or an over reactive immune system are both bad for us.

While multiple known and unknown factors, and many yet undiscovered truths exist, about the corona virus, one thing we can do, without need to ask anyone, or seeking any validation, is to remain calm. The epidemic is teaching us many lessons, and one of them is how to remain calm, remain accepting, how to let go and surrender, how to go with the flow, and how to develop trust and faith in some higher design or blueprint. Once we are able to maintain our poise, balance, harmony and calmness at the consciousness level, at the subconscious, mental and emotional level, it is likely that these same calm and harmonious messages would go out to our immune system as well, and will make the immune system react in the optimum manner, to keep us safe and sound.

So, stay calm, stay healthy, and stay alive.