If you want to have only a mild case of this disease there are things (unproven things) that are fairly likely to help regardless if you are a bee keeper or not. The live virus polio vaccine is very well proven to be protective against the common flu viruses. You will still catch the flu, but only have a mild case. The downside is you need to take the live virus polio vaccine about quarterly to get this benefit. It is strongly suspected that the live virus MMR vaccine will provide much the same benefit. Both would be expected to provide the same benefit against covid-19 to some extent. Of course you can no longer get the live virus polio vaccine in the US as it is no longer registered. Just today an article came out that shows the killed virus flu shot is protective against Alzheimer's:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/27/894731147/flu-shot-and-pneumonia-vaccine-might-reduce-alzheimers-risk-research-shows
Could the inflammation from a bee sting provide the same benefit? Perhaps. But just look at the numbers in that NPR link to show a link between the flu shot and Alzheimer's and note that the link is a very strong link. It took 9000 people who were picked out of a far larger data base. With bee keepers does even one in ten get enough stings to provide any benefit? You probably need to eliminate any bee keeper who suits up or wears gloves most of the time. Do you include someone with one or two hives who does not suit up but only gets a half dozen stings a year? How do you control for age? The number of the under age 50 general public that gets a bad reaction to covid-19 is low. Do you pitch everyone under age 50 from the data base? What is your rating scale for how severe the case is? One way would be mild = does not get admitted to the hospital while severe = gets admitted to the hospital. If you used that definition how do you correct for some areas of the country admitting lots of people and other areas only admitting people who are almost dead?
My point is learning anything meaningful about the link between bee stings and covid-19 would be a challenging job for a bio-statistician. I can hack around with statistics. I have even published professional papers in peer reviewed journals on how to use statistics. I do not have the required statistical skills to do this job with bee stings and covid.
Dick
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