Tag Archives: COVID-19

August 29, 2020 · 11:07 AM

The bell rang!

When you point a finger, remember there are three fingers pointing right back at you.

That’s a little nugget of wisdom I picked up from Coach Dail Smith back in the day. It’s solid advice and packed with truth. I wanted to write a post about our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States but just couldn’t find the right approach or the right words until I turned to one of my favorite scenes from A Christmas Story.

Sure, there’s been a lack of top-down leadership across the nation with an inconsistent and often confusing response but only pointing fingers doesn’t do anybody any good. In the end, it all goes back to the Coach Smith-ism and remembering there are three fingers pointing back at each of us. We haven’t responded well at all to the coronavirus. We’ve overreacted, underreacted, and just plain ignored the fact each of us as citizens needed to take some responsibility in the coronavirus response.

Our general response as Americans has been the “Ralphie Response”. An uncomfortable situation stares us in the face and yet when the bell rings, we chose to ignore everything in front of us because “The bell rang!” We rushed to resume the routine instead of just dealing with the problem and then resuming our regular routines.

Hopefully, we learn from our mistakes now that we understand a pandemic is indeed possible in the United States. Hopefully, we react better the next time our great nation faces a threat.

Stay safe!

Look out for each other.

Try not to point fingers.

Or stick your tongue to a frozen pole.

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Filed under Rants, Reads, Writes

Tagged as A Christmas Story, Coach Dail Smith, COVID-19, pointing fingers

May 15, 2020 · 8:42 AM

Sports Talk Radio Wisdom for Troubled Times

I heard two things of infinite wisdom over the past month on sports talk radio. I know many people think sports are trivial and just a side gig to life. I’m not one of those people although I do now try to keep sports in perspective. In other words, sports have always been an integral part of my life but not my life.

The first piece of wisdom came from Sports Radio 810 host Soren Petro in a discussion about when Major League Baseball would be able to start and how upset people are becoming over the possibility of the 2020 season not happening at all. He said something that has stuck in my head and is about as truthful a description of America 2020 as I’ve heard. To paraphrase, he said,

“Americans believe that what’s inside their own head is the way things have to be.”

The second nugget of wisdom was heard on 1350 KMAN’s afternoon sports talk show, The Game. It came during a discussion of basketball recruiting at Kansas State University. The hosts, John Kurtz, former Clay Center Tiger noseguard Mitch Fortner, and Mason Voth were discussing the recruiting rumor mill. John Kurtz pointed out the distinction that has to be made between what’s fact and what’s BS. His nugget of wisdom is a great piece of wisdom for our times,

“Don’t place stock in Uncle Bob’s Facebook posts.”

There you have it, a couple shots of sports wisdom to get you through the COVID-19 crisis.

First, pay attention to reality whether you like it or right. Reality is not looking for your personal seal of approval. Reality doesn’t give a rat’s ass what on individual thinks. Reality is reality. It’s right there, see it and react accordingly.

Second, hone your BS meter. Take a few minutes to let the information you find on television, radio, and social media sink in and be processed through your brian’s logic filter. Then dig a little deeper before you file the information as reality or pass it along. Uncle Bob on Facebook is rarely a credible source of information (unless he’s posting about how awesome my Traeger skills are).

Stay safe. Be kind. Learn something new.

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Tagged as COVID-19, pandemic, Reality in America, Sports talk radio, wisdom

April 28, 2020 · 6:23 PM

A COVID-19 Exercise: What Next?

As we transition from the first phase of COVID-19 into what comes next, I’ve been thinking a lot about what comes next. No, I don’t mean recovery-wise, I mean what do we do next to make sure we are prepared when the next pandemic threat knocks at our nation’s door?

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to do some reading and studying and maybe even ask for your opinions on the subject of “what’s next?” One thing that is 100%, minted in gold, true is we CANNOT respond to the next pandemic disease threat like we responded to this one. As a nation, we got caught with our pants down. We failed to realize the looming threat. We failed to imagine it could happen to us. We failed to respond rapidly and with intent and the virus spread like a wildfire.

We tried to throw cow poo to cover over the problem while telling everyone it was chocolate. The best nation on the planet with the finest people, a great health system, and all the data we needed fell flat on its face. It will take years to recover from the loss in life, health, security, economics, and trust in our elected officials. Years.

The blame falls on everyone. We should have done better. Period.

We can do better. We need to do better. We should demand better from our leaders. We have the plans, the data, the institutions. What we lack is a cooperative system that has a green light to track, analyze, and respond to international, national, state, county, city, and neighborhood threats. This type of system has been bouncing around in my head for weeks. Sound impossible? Maybe. But think about a system you rely on daily and that you really don’t give a second thought to its complexity.

The weather report.

Meteorology relies on data collection, analysis, and modeling to predict what will likely occur in an hour, a day, a week, months, etc. Maybe the weatherman gets a rain shower wrong every now and then but they rarely miss the big threats, like hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards.

In public health and infectious disease, we have data, we have analytical tools, and we have computer models. What we need is to make the infectious disease reporting system and response as rapid and as commonplace as our weather service.

I envision a system that can give officials rapid, accurate, point-specific information to help them make decisions about how to best implement responses, resources, and social contact initiatives.

Can we do it? Absolutely!

As they said on the Six Million Dollar Man, “We have the technology.”

It’s a question of do we, as a nation, have the resolve to do it.

Lives are at stake. We cannot accept the loss of 50,000+ Americans to a pandemic again. Never, under any circumstance or political environment or world events.

We need better leadership. We need to use our resources. We need to understand and react.

Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna’ be fooled again!” ― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men.

AWIPS-3-head-workstation

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Tagged as Behavior, Community Health, Community Wellness, COVID-19, Pandemic Response, What next?

April 10, 2020 · 9:57 AM

A COVID-19 Exercise: Theoretical effect on local hospitals

Note: This post is the product of my brain working quite a bit on the COVID-19 pandemic issue. It is not meant as any kind of official public health or medical advice. I’m a molecular microbiologist. I’m not a doctor or public health official. There are people A LOT smarter than me supplying official information. There are also many buffoons spewing idiocies out there. In difficult times, knowledge is power. Do the work. Find the truth. Ignore the myths. The most valuable tool we have right now is the same powerful tool we have at our disposal every single day of our lives. Our brain.

On 4-9-2020, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), through their excellent COVID-19 Resource Center web page, reported 1106 confirmed COVID-19 positives with 263 requiring hospitalization (a 23.8% rate). These numbers got me thinking about how my small Kansas town and our excellent local hospital might be affected by the coronavirus.

I did some calculations on what might be in store for our local medical resources if the coronavirus becomes community transferred in our fair city. Information on our local hospital’s website says they are a 25-bed facility. In an emergency, I imagine they can swing another 5-10 beds but I don’t know for sure.

Doubling times are important in a contagious infection scenario. They mean it takes X number of days for the number of infected individuals to be doubled. The latest I heard last week was that COVID-19 was running at a doubling time of four days, so I included that in the table as well as an eight-day doubling timeline. The whole goal of social distancing and flattening the curve strategies are to extend the doubling time as far as possible. By stretching out the timeline of infections, as you can see in the table, a community can keep the number of infections and patients needing medical services within the limitations of the local medical system.

The public health issues rise exponentially once the illnesses overburden the system. It is vital to stay under these critical numbers and to stay within the limitations of our medical systems. As you can see in the table below, for our community hospital, in theory, the key period will be how fast we go from around 50 total positives (~10 patients hospitalized) to 250 positives (~50 patients hospitalized). If we don’t alter the doubling time of 4 days, our medical system will go from adequate to overwhelmed in about ten days. Ten days!

Bottom line. Stay home. Do what the local and state authorities advise. Be safe. Be kind. Help each other out.

# of COVID-19 Positive Cases	Local Hospitalization (at a 20% rate)	Days @ Doubling Time = 4 days	Days @ Doubling Time = 8 days
1	<=1	0	0
2	<=1	4	8
4	1	8	16
8	1.6	12	24
16	3.2	16	32
32	6.4	20	40
64	12.8	24	48
128	25.6	28	56
256	51.2	32	64
512	102.4	36	72
1024	204.8	40	80
2048	409.6	44	88
4096	819.2	48	96
8192	1638.4	52	104
16384	3276.8	56	112

Here are a few things I’ve posted elsewhere about COVD-19:

Novel Coronavirus 2019: Scientist Roundtable

April 6, 2020 Facebook post about antivirals.

What are antivirals? They’re medications that reduce the virus making more of itself. They do their job in a variety of ways from affecting the genes being made into functional proteins to the proteins not being able to be put together properly to make new virus. They don’t completely kill the virus. They are effective because they can reduce symptoms or shorten the length of infection.

What antiviral drugs aren’t are miracle cures. You don’t inject an antiviral and expect to be protected or to stand up and walk out of ICU in a few hours. They may have serious side effects that may cause more harm than health so the balance has to be weighed between the doctor and the patient. That’s why antivirals and vaccines and all other drugs undergo extensive testing to give the doctor and patient the best information to make the best decisions.

Antiviral drugs are important in new outbreaks. In pandemics, like we’re in now, reducing and shortening hospital stays is vital. But, we have to remember one of the first tenets of medicine as we move to use existing antivirals in novel scenarios, “First, do no harm”.

The best way to stop pandemics? Prevent pandemics. That, my friends, is something I’ve been thinking a lot about and will write about soon. It’s time to elevate infectious disease defense to the level of national defense.

Have a good day! Stay safe. Be nice. Help each other out.

March 31, 2020 Facebook post on Social Distancing

Unacast has some interesting data tools they use to track movement by GPS. Below is a link to their Social Distancing Scoreboard.

Yesterday, Dr. Lee Norman of the KDHE talked about the importance of the stay-at-home order. At our current ~35% reduction in Kansan movement, the infection doubling time is around 3.6 days. If we can get to a 45% reduction, the doubling time increases to ~6.5 days. At a 55% reduction, it jumps to almost 10 days.

Why is this so damn important, you ask? Because at 55% reduction & 10 days doubling time, Kansas has ample medical resources to handle it. 45% & 6 days pushes the health systems to their limit. The health system becomes stressed and overloaded at our current 35% reduction or anything below that.

Stay safe, friends! Minimize movement and help each other out, if only with a wave and a smile.

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Filed under Rants, Reads, Uncategorized, Writes

Tagged as Behavior, Community Health, Community Wellness, COVID-19, Flattening the Curve, Molecular Microbiology, Science, Social Distancing

March 15, 2020 · 12:17 PM

Sports & Life 2020

Sports are not life.

Sports are not…

The struggle is real. At least for me. Sports run in the background of my life. Always have. Probably always will. The spread of the SARS-2 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought the sports world to a screeching halt right at two of the peak times of this sports fan’s life, the NCAA Basketball Tournament and the start of the MLB season. Honestly, I no longer live on the edge of my seat over either these events as I once did but I do enjoy having them available to pay attention to.

The SARS-2 pandemic has also brought together two of my life’s passions, sports and microbiology. Public health and safety have warranted decisions recently that are highly unpopular with the sports side of my psyche. I miss my sports. These same decisions make perfect sense as sound preventative measures with the microbiologist side. Bottom line: People in positions of responsibility were forced to make very difficult decisions in a short amount of time.

Great leadership is rational in irrational situations. Real life wins out over the sport’s life every time. As it should.

I feel bad for the athletes and coaches who did not see a 2019-2020 dream fulfilled with the magic of a postseason, especially the high school athletes. The only wisdom I can provide as a salve to soothe this unprecedented situation is this somewhat out-of-left-field food analogy.

You were allowed to make this beautiful and delicious multi-layered cake during your regular season. You were able to put various amounts and flavors of icing on your cake during the early postseason. Some of you earned the right to further decorate your frosted cake with awesome plastic cartoon character statues or your favorite candy bits by qualifying for state competition. What you didn’t get—the thing pulled away from you just as it was being handed to you—was a chance to place the “#1” candle of top of your cake for the world to see. For this, I’m sorry. But please don’t forget you made an awesome cake which looks fabulous (Those My Little Pony characters are pure genius!) and that you’ll remember for the rest of your lives.

Congratulations to all!

I know this doesn’t help the sting much but many of us appreciate and respect the work you put into the season. In a global infectious pandemic, like in a team, we are best when we are together.

Good luck in the future and God bless us all.

And please never forget, sports are not life. Life is life. It’s there for each of us to make better for ourselves and those around us.

Be safe.

Be kind.

Help each other out.