Fever in the Era of Coronavirus
Checking our temperature has become an essential ritual in this era of COVID-19 pandemic. No one used to care if I had fever, but now fever rules the world. Now everyone wants to know if I have fever. If I do, not only will I be denied entry to a school, office, restaurant, airplane, or a train, but I will most likely be quarantined. So, when the Wall Street Journal published an article on the subject, it gave me the idea to write about fever and thermometers. Heat in the body is produced by metabolic activity, mostly in the muscles and the liver. It is the responsibility of the temperature regulatory center, which is in the brain (the hypothalamus) to maintain a steady temperature. Excessive heat is removed through the skin and our breath. The normal core body temperature is generally defined as 98.6 ºF (37ºC). The body temperature does fluctuate between men and women, time of the day, environmental exposure, clothing, and many other factors. Fever, an elevation in core body...