The tests can also be a good way to catch underlying problems in infrastructure or water supplies — like in Flint, Mich., where for years nearly 30,000 schoolchildren were exposed to water contaminated with lead after city officials began drawing water from the Flint River in 2014, according to Glenn Patterson, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus.
“It’s as if we’ve been in a war zone for the last year,” said Dr. Marc Moss, head of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who has researched burnout among hospital workers. “It’s not anyone’s fault. We have tough jobs and we see tragedy.” Hospital workers have carried out duties that they have never done before — and likely never expected they would be called on to do — before COVID-19. For example, there were radiologists working in intensive care units during the pandemic, Gold said.
Those counties shouldn’t count on it, according to Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health. “If counties have low vaccination rates, now is the time to address that, especially with the delta variant,” she said.
“We’ve known since early on that the full impact was not only deaths due to this virus,” said Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, adding, “People want to understand this better.”
Early in Dr. Emmy Betz’s career, “well-meaning mentors” recommended she find an issue other than gun violence to research. She’s now director of the nonpartisan Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (and an emergency room physician). “We’ve been really behind in finding solutions, and behind especially when you compare it to things like motor vehicle safety, traffic safety,” Betz said.
It’s still a bit early to assess the impact of repealing the dial, though trends are starting to emerge, said Dr. Jon Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. Cases already were rising before the state left restrictions up to the counties, and it’s not surprising they’ve kept going up, he said. “We were certainly in a general upswing,” he said.
It’s difficult to tell if the second day of increases is meaningless “noise” in the data, or a sign that the virus is spreading more widely, Dr. Jon Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, said during the news conference. The situation should become clearer over the next week, but in the meantime, it’s “tough” to know if the public should stay the course with their current behavior or take additional precautions, he said.
Generally speaking, a population has reached herd immunity when each infected person passes a virus to no more than one other person, on average, said Dr. Jon Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. Under those circumstances, an epidemic will peter out, though some people still will get sick after reaching the herd immunity threshold, he said.
