Getting Well with Yogurt? And are Lockdowns Working?

I've been sick for almost a month. Not seriously sick--I've had a lingering cough and fatigue from a cold. I've tried Umcka Cold Care, antibiotics, and sunlight (enough to give me a sunburn). They've all helped (maybe), but I'm still sick.

Then a week ago, I saw a video by Dr. Davis describing strategies for boosting your immune system. One strategy was making "yogurt" with L. casei shirota bacteria, found in a probiotic drink called Yakult. (I'm not affiliated with Dr. Davis or any products.) The bacteria has been shown in studies to prevent upper respiratory infections and reduce the length of those illnesses. (Disclosure: the studies are funded by the manufacturer.) He cautioned against drinking it  since it's full of sugar, but gave instructions for making yogurt with it. At the time, the grocery store where I shop was out of Yakult, but was back in stock Friday and I whipped up a batch of yogurt during lunch. Last night, it was finally finished fermenting and I ate some today. I don't know if it's the yogurt, the extra iron I've been taking, or if my illness is finally about to run its course, but I'm feeling better than I have in weeks. I can take a deep breath without feeling that something is in my upper chest. I'm still coughing a little, though--but I just started eating the yogurt today. The next time I have a cold, I'll make more of the yogurt.

I've left the house a few times since I've been sick, but stayed in my car. I picked up my order of meat, eggs and vegetables at a twee little grocer. The lettuce and tomatoes tasted like they were fresh out of the garden. They're from an Amish farm in southern Indiana, so they must have been grown in greenhouses this time of year. Don't ask me how they grow greenhouse tomatoes that taste so good. Then I picked up some pants on the south side of Indy. I don't get down there often, so I had to drive around a bit to find the store. The amount of traffic seemed pre-COVID normal. The Lowe's parking lot was packed and their nursery looked well-stocked from what I could see from my car. Almost everybody was wearing a mask. Near my house, lots of people are walking their dogs, riding their bikes and skateboards, and people are playing tennis, even though someone said the tennis court was supposed to be closed. Construction and home improvement projects around town look like they're moving along.

Yes, we have a stay-at-home order, and yes, Indianapolis is in one of three counties on a later start than everyone else on Indiana's Back on Track plan to reopen the state. But that's the way things work here: the police aren't up your butt over minor rule-breaking. In fact, our governor said he didn't enact a strict lockdown because the people of Indiana wouldn't stand for it. Results so far: for every 10,000 people in Indianapolis, 3.7 have died from COVID. We've lost about as many Hoosiers as we did from the flu and pneumonia in 2018. It's worse than the flu, but not ten times worse. Our daily deaths for all Indiana have held steady at around 36 people per day for weeks (one-third of the deaths are in nursing homes). Normally, according to Indiana University statistics, 65,602 people die every year in Indiana--that's an average of 180 per day. If you assume all COVID deaths are excess deaths, that's a spike in death close to what Sweden has seen. It's nowhere close to the spikes of excess death in New York City or much of western Europe. Like Sweden, Indiana has no apparent risk of people dying of COVID from a lack of medical care according to the state's coronavirus site. Maybe we'll get the herd immunity soon, too.

Have the lockdowns worked? If someone can get a bad case of COVID from touching a grocery bag while quarantined, they're probably less effective than people think. Looking at Worldometers' deaths per million, the results of places that strictly enforced lockdowns are all over the place. Michigan, where their mom governor has clamped down, has one of the highest COVID death rates in the US (mostly due to Detroit), plus armed protestors at the capitol, sheriffs in the hinterlands who've refused to enforce parts of the emergency order and a population all out of Midwestern nice. It seems like it would be better to home in on helping high-risk people and trying to reduce infections in nursing homes, hospitals, meat packing plants and other potential hotbeds instead of closing plant nurseries and outlawing fishing from motorboats, of all things. And by the way, the counties where sheriffs have refused to enforce parts of the emergency order (Benzie, Leelanau, Manistee and Mason Counties) have a combined death toll of zero.

In any case, if you'd like to try to help your immune system with shirota yogurt, here's Dr. Davis's recipe. If you want to make more batches, Bob Niland, a knowledgeable commenter on Davis's site, says he thinks the bottles can be frozen for future use. The full video is here.