“I think one of the big concerns around flying that could be addressed is all the other steps around flying,” said Elizabeth Carlton, an associate professor with the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz. “How do you get to the airport? Is it in an Uber or Lyft? Once you’re in the airport is there congestion and crowds?”
Dr. Maya Haasz, an attending physician in the pediatric emergency room at Children’s Hospital Colorado and an assistant professor at University of Colorado School of Medicine, brought up the vulnerability of children who already had mental health concerns, especially depression and anxiety, and emphasized the need for parents to ask children about their moods, mental health and low moments.
“It will be a little hard to sort out the degree to which a lot more kids are getting infected and the degree to which our testing capacity has gone up,” said Sean O’Leary, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado. “What we can say is that it’s not particularly surprising given the large increase in cases we’ve seen nationally overall.”
Dr. Maya Haasz, an attending physician in the pediatric emergency room at Children’s Hospital Colorado and an assistant professor at University of Colorado School of Medicine, said they are seeing injuries that reflect a summer of individual activity rather than team sports. Kids are out riding their bikes and their scooters, she said, but not always wearing helmets. “We’re seeing more significant head injuries,” she said.
Anyone planning to use marijuana should discuss possible risks with their health professional first, said Page, who is a professor in the department of clinical pharmacy and physical medicine/rehabilitation at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Aurora, Colorado. "If people choose to use cannabis for its medicinal or recreational effects, the oral and topical forms, for which doses can be measured, may reduce some of the potential harms," Page said in a statement.
In search of what I might call a more humanistic view on air travel in the time of COVID-19, I reached out to an unlikely source: an infectious disease specialist. Dr. Michelle Barron is the medical director of infection control and prevention at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. Talking with Barron about the risks of contracting and spreading COVID-19 while traveling was a little like talking to Alex Honnold about the perils of rock climbing.
“They’re doing the right things in identifying who’s infected, making sure those people are isolated, doing contract tracing, quarantining,” said Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of epidemiology at Colorado School of Public Health. “Those are all very important, but unless they can figure out exactly what’s gone wrong with each outbreak — and correct it — then it seems like they run the risk of this continuing.”
There’s even a name for it: overtraining syndrome. According to Dr. Gregory Walker, a pediatric primary care sports medicine physician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, “That’s when an athlete has worse performance despite intense training. This can encompass a bunch of factors like physiologic stress, emotional stress, fatigue and anxiety.”
