I have cancer for 15 years now and I’m still living a happy and healthy life in harmony with it. The Corona crisis has an enormous impact on everyone, but certainly cancer patients. We suffer from an economic crisis caused by the corona measures taken already. 

In 2016, a study appeared in The Lancet, calculating that the 2008 economic crisis caused 260,000 additional cancer deaths (160,000 in Europe). This crisis will cost more cancer deaths for sure. 

Gupta strategists published a report on May 21 this year; ‘COVID goes Cuckoo’. with painful figures of the measures for regular care in the Netherlands: hospital care for COVID patients has saved an estimated 13,000 to 21,000 healthy life years (QALYs) in the Netherlands (in March and April). However, this profit was accompanied by an unacceptable loss in the REGULAR care. While COVID care flooded hospitals, REGULAR care suffered unprecedented, disproportionate damage. Discontinuation of regular care resulted in an estimated loss of 100,000 to 400,000 healthy life years. This means that the loss in regular care is approximately ten times as high as both the number of healthy life years gained with COVID care and the number of healthy life years lost through COVID. And even then we are not complete. The famines will drive the number of collateral deaths to outrageous proportions. 

Every day 110 people die from cancer in the Netherlands. 22,000 people worldwide. Annually 8,000,000 people globally … Cancer deaths can be prevented in more than 50% of the cases. In the same way that many corona deaths could have been prevented with a healthy lifestyle. 

And then there was hope … 

The University of Oxford study was published on 23 June in which it is described that dexamethasone leads to a significant reduction in the number of deaths from Corona and a decrease in patients that need the IC.

On July 21, the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (part of the British Medical Journal) published a study showing that prednisone benefits saved lives (65% fewer deaths from the cytokine storm, the main cause of death) and 70% fewer people need the IC. In addition, the recovery will take a week shorter.

As a cancer patient, I wonder why we are still in panic and remain in a sort of cramp and why we are not happy that there is now a solution for the majority of people with serious problems. It brings us peace and takes away the worries we have been dealing with for months now. 

And yes; people will still die from corona. That is a characteristic of a virus; people die from it. But the sting has been taken out of corona. It then becomes more of a “normal” virus with a normal number of deaths. Thanks to good science and great nurses and doctors who help patients at the risk of their own lives. Now only government and politics have to get to work and have the guts to break out of the catatonic state we have put ourselves into.