There are several things you can do, that will reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19. You could:

1. Stay at home, alone, until the pandemic is over, having all your sterilized food and other sterilized necessary items brought to you by sterilized robots. This would be effective, but it is not super practical.
2. Wear a mask and maintain social distancing, wherever you might encounter another person. This is more tolerable than option 1. However, it is annoying and is probably not something that people can keep doing for any length of time.
3. Get vaccinated. You definitely want to do this as soon as you can, but it is not a 100% guarantee that you will not be infected.

We have all heard disease experts encouraging us to do all these things. (Well, maybe not the “sterilized robots” part). However, there is one simple thing that is easy to do, and even enjoyable, that the experts have not disseminated to the general public, but that they have written up in scholarly journals. One of those journals is the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM). Another is BMC Geriatrics.

The paper of interest in the BJSM, titled “Physical inactivity is associated with a higher risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes: a study in 48,440 adult patients” covers the period from March 2018 to March 2020. The patients were members of the Kaiser Permanente system in California. March 2018 was well before COVID-19 burst upon the world. It was when the researchers started taking data on the activity levels of over 48,000 people who eventually were infected by the SARS-Cov-2 virus. The end of the data collection period in March 2020 was when the State of California went into lockdown due to the disease.

Whenever a member visited a Kaiser facility for any reason, they reported on their activity level, which went into their electronically maintained record. They were placed into one of three categories:

• Physically inactive: between 0 and 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per week
• Some activity: between 11 and 149 minutes of MVPA per week
• Meeting guidelines: 150 and up minutes of MVPA per week

Patients with COVID-19 who were consistently inactive had a greater risk of

• Hospitalization
• Admission to the intensive care unit (ICU)
• Death,

than did the people who met the guidelines. Those who engaged in some activity, but less than 150 minutes per week fell between the inactive and the guideline-meeting patients in terms of outcomes.

Inactive patients were:

• 2.26x as likely to require hospitalization than were guideline-meeting patients,
• 1.73x as likely to be admitted to the ICU,
• 2.49x as likely to die,

than were the patients who met the guidelines.

That is sobering. Inactive people who contracted COVID-19 were more than twice as likely, actually two and a half times as likely, to die of their illness than were people who habitually clocked-in a little over 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day.

There are all kinds of reasons to remain physically active throughout life. COVID-19 is just a new addition to that list.

Physical activity is a good defense against the most serious consequences of COVID-19. Clearly, it doesn’t keep you from getting the disease. The active people in this study all contracted COVID-19. The difference is that they fared better.

• They were not hospitalized as often.
• They were not admitted to the ICU as often.
• They did not die as often.

How can this be explained? That question is addressed in the BMC Geriatrics paper referenced above, titled “Lifestyle exercise attenuates immunosenescence; flow cytometry analysis.” This paper brings out the fact that a person’s natural immunity to pathogens declines with age, and that exercise moderates the slope of that decline. Active people retain immunity to a wide range of diseases, including viral diseases. The paper does not specifically test immunity to COVID-19 but serves as a backup to the idea that being physically active bolsters a person’s immune response to a wide range of viral infections.

Physical activity is a good thing to add to all the other things that you do to protect yourself and your loved ones from contracting COVID-19. Aside from its protective value, physical activity can be enjoyable. When you are active, that is when you are most alive.

BIO:

Allen G. Taylor is a 40-year veteran of the computer industry and the author of over 40 books, including Develop Microsoft HoloLens Apps Now, Get Fit with Apple Watch, Cruise for Free, SQL For Dummies, 9th Edition, Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies, Database Development For Dummies, Access Power Programming with VBA, and SQL All-In-One For Dummies, Third Edition. He lectures internationally on astronomy, databases, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He also teaches database development and Crystal Reports through a leading online education provider. For the latest news on Allen’s activities, check out his blog at wwwallengtaylor.com or contact him at allen.taylor@ieee.org.