Uncertainty is the only certainty

It hits when you think there is no way to predict the future. Nobody knows. Nostradamus was a fluke,
Tarot Cards and Astrology are good to predict steel birds colliding against tall towers, Sun Signs tell you
what kind of a person you are, data analytics end up drawing a chart, linear and multiple regression take
very few factors into account.

While life is a million times more complex, yet simple, than what above tools consider it be, probably it’s
time to stop building mobile phone apps to show the geographic impact of a virus in different colored
charts. One thing is certain, we call it Data Analytics and a dashboard follows. Microsoft has one. The
visual capitalist has designed an infographic and more. You may find it here:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/

Today when my internet speeds tumbled, I picked up this book called “What Doctors Don’t Get to Study
in Medical School” by BM Hegde. I was impressed with chapters 26, 42 and some more. It talks about
uncertainty, The Chaos Theory and personalized medicine. Earlier, in my pursuit of alternative medicine,
I had ended up researching ideas like “Orthomolecular Medicine” and “Multi-Omics”. Orthomolecular
medicine aims to maintain human health through nutritional supplementation.  Multi-omics or
Integrative omics is a biological analysis approach in which the data sets are multiple "omes", such as
the genome, proteome, transcriptome, epigenome, metabolome, and microbiome, in other words, the
use of multiple omics technologies to study life in a concerted way. By combining these "omes",
scientists can analyze complex biological big data to find novel associations between biological entities
pinpoint relevant biomarkers and build elaborate markers of disease and physiology.

Ebola, Corona Virus, SARS, Cholera, H1N1 march towards erasing the humanity and a typical Indian
doctor’s response would most probably be antibiotics. Are we ready for anything other than common
cold or the regular Streptococcus bacteria giving us sore throats? Everybody gets the same red pills and
blue capsules. Two of the red ones and three blue ones every day and maintain your blood pressure at
120/80? Personalized medicine targeting individuals is probably a thing for the rich.

Multi-omics and orthomolecular medicine could help us predict where a disease would spread, help us
understand if an individual is susceptible to a certain kind of diseases by identifying the disease markers.
The future is in these healthcare technologies that gather massive amounts of data, which could later be
used to provide insights.

It is a miracle that we continue to exist on this planet and continue to thrive, create more stock
exchanges, and build bigger houses. With the current healthcare systems that treat everybody the same,
treat fevers with chloroquine, one should really ask the question, are we all feeling lucky with the
corona virus?

To conclude, This too shall pass

Would someone listen please?

I’m sick of gruel, and the dietetics,
I’m sick of the pills, and sicker emetics
I’m sick of pulses, tardiness or quickness,
I’m sick of blood, its thinness, and thickness
In short, within a word, I’m sick of sickness!
- Thomas Hood, ‘Fragment’, c.1844