Thomas Finger is a professor of cellular and structural biology specializing in taste at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Based on accounts he’s collected from around the world, “The very peculiar thing about the covid taste loss is that it may preferentially affect sweet,” he says, meaning for some people, that’s the first taste to go — but it remains unknown why tastes would not be impacted equally.
Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, says his team of epidemiologists derived the January introduction date by projecting backwards from the first cases identified by the CDPHE. “What is really built into it is the transmission dynamics,” he said. “In other words, how long it takes for somebody to go from being infected to being symptomatic, symptomatic to detected.”
"If you're starting to feel really short of breath, coughing a lot and developing fever – especially if you've had exposure to somebody who either has had COVID-19 or if you've been in a place or situation where you might have been exposed – then it's a good idea to go to the emergency department," says Dr. Darlene Tad-y, vice president of clinical affairs for the Colorado Hospital Association and a hospital medicine physician at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital [and CU School of Medicine].
The University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus went to work across its vast network of idled labs and educational facilities, collecting more than 36,600 masks, 47,500 disposable lab gowns, 245,000 pairs of gloves and 50 cases of disinfectant wipes. The CU School of Dental Medicine pitched in with 130,000 pairs of gloves, 45,000 gowns and 35,000 masks.
The daily stress of the current pandemic, and the isolating measures taken to combat it, make impulse control increasingly difficult, said Dr. Steven Berkowitz, a child psychiatrist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Dr. Hillary Lum, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said people should make decisions based on their perception of the quality of life. “The questions about a do not resuscitate order are emotional and important to have accurate information,” Lum said. “Thinking about whether someone wants a do-not-resuscitate or not should be related to what is the likelihood of that procedure being beneficial to a person who restarts their heart and lungs but also return to a life that they value.”
The differences in the models is driven in part by the type of data they use in their projections. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model largely relies on death and hospitalization data. Whereas the state’s model relies on case data, said Elizabeth Carlton, assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health.
“The orders to quarantine, shelter in place, isolate seemed pretty counterintuitive to everything we’ve been taught, which is to gather, commune and connect,” says Meghan White, the alumni and volunteer coordinator at CeDAR, the University of Colorado Health’s Center for Dependency, Addiction and Rehabilitation at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.
