A Bioelectromagnetic Proposal Approaching the Complex Challenges of COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has experienced unprecedented limitations and extraordinary scientific efforts to address this exceptional situation. Despite blanket closures that have resulted in significant financial constraints and losses around the world, research has an “unlimited” budget, with an exceptional concentration of medical and scientific care on a single topic: understanding the mechanisms for overcoming the disease. A large number of clinical trials have been launched with different drugs that have been behind different concepts and solutions. I would like to focus on the complexity aspect of COVID-19. Living systems are organized in a complex way, which implies dynamic stochastic phenomena, and deterministic reductionism can mislead research. When research focuses on individual molecules or pathways as products, it is distracted from the processes in which these products operate, thus neglecting the complex interactions between regulations and feedback controls. Common problems in product-oriented research are articulated as “double-edged swords”, “Janus behavior”, “two-sided action”, with a simple question: “friend or foe?” I focus on the missing complexity. I propose a bioelectromagnetic process that can maintain a complex approach, affecting processes rather than products. This hypothetical proposal is not a comprehensive solution. Complexity itself limits the overall effects of causing “miracles”. Well-designed electromagnetic effects can support current efforts and, in combination with intensively developed pharmaceuticals, bring us closer to a pharmaceutical solution against COVID-19.