“Given the fact that we've experienced rising cases and hospitalizations, there's no doubt that the numbers of deaths will rise,” said Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health in a remote update. “I hope that our numbers are overestimates, but I think we're facing a number of deaths that's far greater than we would like to experience.”
Elizabeth Carlton, an infectious disease researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health who works with Bayham as part of the modeling team helping the state project the pandemic’s course, said COVID fatigue likely plays a big role. People just want to go back to their normal lives, which leads them to let down their precautions in what they consider “safe” environments, like their own home in the company of friends.
“It is always a bit politically charged because different people have different motivations,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado. “But it has played out in spades with the COVID pandemic because there is such a lot of political motivation to say, ‘Oh, it’s not that many people. It’s not so dangerous.’”
That’s been an adjustment for Lexi Barrere, an instructor at the University of Colorado’s College of Nursing and nurse practitioner at a school-based health clinic serving families in Sheridan School District No. 2. Barrere and her colleagues would traditionally go into schools to provide services such as sports physicals and mental, dental or behavioral health care, but now they rely on connecting with patients virtually, which is limiting families’ access to care, she said.
“My thoughts are that it’s a horrible idea to play,” Comstock, an epidemiology professor at the Colorado School of Public Health and a sports injury expert, said with an uneasy laugh, “but I have no doubt that colleges are going to go through with it anyway.
A foundation started by the parents of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim is closing and being reborn as a program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. Folding the Avielle Foundation into the National Mental Health Innovation Center at the university’s main medical training and services campus will make the work of the center more robust and lead to a broader impact, said Matt Vogl, the center's executive director. “We are not currently able to focus attention specifically on violence prevention, building compassion and the associated brain science behind those things,” he said in an email. “Now we can.”
“We have two independent scientific experiments that come up with the same results that demonstrate that both of these vaccines are highly effective,” said Dr. Thomas Campbell, a professor of infectious disease medicine at CU Anschutz Medical Campus. “We are able to do that already with lots of other vaccines, I don’t think that will be a big issue.”
About a month into the pandemic, Dr. Michelle Barron, professor at the CU School of Medicine specializing in infectious diseases, took the advice she had been giving others for years and sought the help of a therapist. She shared her reasoning in an episode of the CU Anschutz podcast "COVID Reflections" which focuses on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic.
