Thomas Jaenisch, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Public Health, said that he believes the state’s dry and warm summer climate could help contain the coronavirus’ spread during the upcoming warmer seasons. “I think this is something that is reasonable to speculate,” Jaenisch said.
“It boils down to these communities being less protected, with fewer resources to be deployed to screen and identify a threat,” said Glen Mays, chair of the Department of Health Systems, Management and Policy in the Colorado School of Public Health. “When a new thing happens, you have to make choices every day. Ultimately, that means someone’s not going to get served.”
“It’s not necessary for most people with COVID-19 to come into the hospital. If people aren’t sick enough to be in the hospital, if they can manage their illness at home, keep themselves away from others until the illness resolves, then that will help protect the people who have to be in the hospital, like people with cancer and other illnesses, that are more susceptible,” says Dr. Thomas Campbell, professor of Infection Disease at the University of Colorado.
“You definitely don’t want people making those decisions in the heat of the moment, when they haven’t slept and they haven’t eaten and there’s no air conditioning,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus. “You make worse decisions under those circumstances.”
"If you have the genetic material and know what it’s alphabetical order is, it’s possible that you make a vaccine slightly faster," said Dr. David Kroll, a professor at the CU Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the Anschutz Medical Campus. "What you’re trying to do there is figure out what dose is required to give an immune system response that could fight off or inactivate the virus.”
Michelle Barron, MD, medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, clarifies to Yahoo Lifestyle why the guide might not exactly be relevant to the general public in preparing for coronavirus outbreaks: “These CDC guidelines apply to healthcare workers who wear respirators — not the standard masks for the public at large.”
Dr. Michelle Barron, the medical director of infection control and prevention at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital [and CU School of Medicine], tells a story of an unannounced drill a couple years ago for responding to the Ebola virus. A member of Barron’s team talked of recent travel to Africa, then collapsed to the floor. Just as her alarmed colleagues were about to stick an IV in her arm, the woman fessed up that it was a drill. “That’s the way hospitals operate,” Barron said. “We’ve got to plan for these things. There’s nothing special for (coronavirus) we needed to do in that regard because we do it on a daily basis.”
“I think there’s a lot of fear over the coronavirus because it seems very new and it’s spreading very quickly,” says Dr. Charles Little, Medical Director of Emergency Preparedness for UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital. “I think it’s important to keep it in context. We’ve just come through flu season, where we’ve had tens of thousands of deaths from that. We’re not nearly at that level of deaths from the coronavirus, even worldwide, so it’s important to keep it in perspective.”
