||| BY MINOR LILE, ORCASONIAN REPORTER |||
At today’s Board of Health meeting, Public Health Officer Dr Frank James shared his perspective on the current status of the pandemic in San Juan County and asked that his remarks be shared with the entire community.
Here is what Dr. James had to say:
“Hello everyone. I just want to make a few comments and I want to make a request of everybody that’s listening.
“The next month is the crux of the whole pandemic. This is it. This is going to be the most serious time. We have a patient hospitalized right now who is high risk. It’s a time when deaths could occur. This is going to be when most people that we have that are going to get the disease are going to get the disease, in the next month or so, the next four to six weeks.
“This is the time when we have to take extraordinary measures to protect ourselves.
“We went 10 weeks with no cases in our county and what I can tell you is that that means there was no disease in our county at all. But in the past 2 weeks that has blown up. There are many cases and many more possible cases in our county now and we now have some people that are extremely ill. At the same time the capacity of our hospitals is shrinking.
“If we’re going to end up in a situation where we have a surge of cases this is it.
“The fundamentals have not changed. 40% of people who have this disease have no symptoms at all. They don’t know they have it. Others who contract the disease actually have no symptoms for the first 48 hours that they are infectious. This is not a disease we can detect by symptoms, people feel just fine.
“With a fairly large spread in our community already, we are heading into the most risky time of the entire year. It’s a time when people gather at home, they have close contacts, they’re indoors, they don’t wear masks for sustained periods of time. That’s a formula for transmission of this disease. We know that friends, neighbors and relatives are the most likely people we will get this from and spread it to. And the most likely location for this transmission is in your home.
“If I could beg you, I would beg you. I do beg you, please share this message with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues. They have to know that this is the time when we have to take those responsibilities seriously. If we do that, if we wear our masks, if we distance, if we don’t travel, we’re going to do as well as we’ve done already.
“And we’ve had an outstanding success. There are hundreds of (thousands) of deaths in America. We’ve had none. That’s an achievement of our entire community, by doing the right thing.
“I certainly know of people who are going to travel for Thanksgiving. Either travelling or having guests in your home is not the right thing to do. We need to make sure that this is a social norm. I don’t have a lot of patience with people talking about shaming. It’s just a fact. This is not the time to engage in those activities. The people that have made those plans need to cancel them.
“And it’s not just about yourself, it’s the entire community. We have an extremely high risk community. We already have this disease out in it. We have community spread for the first time. It is a dangerous situation. It can grow exponentially because no-one knows they have it when they spread the disease. With exponential growth we can expect this to double or quadruple the number of cases we have and the number of people being quarantined. We do not have the staff to do that. Our hospitals do not have the staff to manage to manage that number of cases. We have to behave differently and we have to do it now.
“I appreciate all of our community’s support and our willingness to do the right thing up to this point. This is the crux. This is when it matters.
“Around the corner there’s so much good news. New treatments have been released and the vaccines are promising to be highly effective and very safe. The first two vaccines, I’ve looked at some of the data. There’s 95% efficacy, even in elders. For mildly ill and severely ill people they work. They are just around the corner. We’ll see the first vaccines in December. We’ll see a lot distributed in January, February, March, and by April we’ll have enough so that anyone who wants a vaccine can get it.
“But until then, and certainly for now, it is time to double down on our commitment to limit the spread of this disease.”
Thank you, Minor for printing this.
Dr. James is right on when he reminds us that our attacker is invisible and silent, with no advance warning. The community, social customs and activities we have built up around us as a result of our basic needs for “food, clothing and shelter”, as well as needs for connection, touch and sharing are now things we must curtail. No wonder it’s hard….we’ve behaved this way our whole lives.
The crisis has come to our islands. Let’s put warmth and caring in our phone calls, share ideas and love in our e-mails, have smiles and laughter in our Zooms (don’t just get up and go pour a drink, showing us your shirttail as you retreat; cancel the video), and real appreciation for the masked delivery people .
Sing to the deer, photograph those young Downy Woodpeckers that come to the feeder,
marvel at the strength of the wind and rain, and connect with what’s around you….that’s reality.
Margo, You are right on! It’s not hard to see why you are living such an amazing life of longevity!
Thanks for posting this. I just want to encourage folks to order groceries for Curbside Pickup or Home Delivery to reduce or eliminate time spent in the store during this critical time. You can order directly from Orcas Food Co-op at https://orcasfood.coop/shop
To add to Dr. James’s discussion of the vaccines, there are two that are very promising and likely to obtain Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA by the end of this month — from Pfizer and Moderna. Based on the data that can be gleaned from their press releases, both vaccines are 94.5+-3.1 percent effective, or over 90 percent, which is amazing. Pfizer says its vaccine is 94 percent effective for “elderly” patients, but that number will necessarily have larger uncertainty due to a smaller sample size. And neither vaccine showed any serious negative effects, but the testing has been going on for only a few months. I presume the FDA will be taking a hard look at this question in the coming weeks.
Given that SJ County has 34 percent of its population over age 65, and that many of these people probably have compromising conditions such as asthma or heart disease, it would be great if we could be included among those counties that get early doses. I hope that is possible.
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool
“Based on seroprevalence data and increases in testing, by default we assume there are five times more cases than are being reported (5:1 ascertainment bias). In places with less testing availability, that bias may be higher. We are evaluating the inclusion of lower ascertainment biases based on increased testing.”
The COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool is a collaborative project led by Prof. Joshua Weitz and Prof. Clio Andrisat the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with researchers at the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory and Stanford University, and powered by RStudio. Description of the method and analyses available at Nature Human Behaviour.
As a rural county, with a comparatively low total dose requirement, we are unlikely to be able to choose which vaccine we wish to receive. According to published reports, the Pfizer vaccine must be stored at -70f degrees. That’s not a typo. 70 degrees below zero. Even that is uncertain as I’ve read articles that stated -100f degrees. In any case, we simply don’t have the facilities to store something at that temperature. The Moderna vaccine can be stored a higher temperatures, -20f and up to -4f, which is the temperature of a household freezer. Logistics will likely dictate which vaccine we receive.
It would help for the public to know soon what facilities have been qualified by the state DOH to administer vaccines, and what are the qualifications for individuals to get vaccinated during the first phase of the program, which would begin some time in December according to what I’ve read so far.
I have translated most of Dr. Frank’s statements into Spanish and sent them out to my Spanish speaking friends and neighbors. They are taking it seriously.