COVID-19 health danger is overblown
On Sept. 24, on the front page, this newspaper published an interview reporter Katie Langford had conducted with Boulder County Public Health executive Jeff Zayach. Langford wrote that the interview was being conducted “amid the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak at the University of Colorado (1,144 CU attendees or staff had tested positive for COVID 19 in the first month of classes).”
She then got right to the point. She asked Zayach: “What is your opinion on CU Boulder’s handling of COVID-19?” Followed by: “How do you think they’ve (CU) done addressing the virus on campus?” And finally: “Why hasn’t the health department stepped in and closed CU Boulder yet?”
Well, if Zayach had been fully prepared for the interview, he would have answered Langford’s questions calmly by clearly stating that the health department and CU had things under control. He could have told Landford that cases are really not that important when one evaluates or tracks the severity of the current status of the coronavirus outbreak.
He could have educated us that the key metric of concern for the health department is not the number of cases each day, but rather the number of people being hospitalized. He then could have recited the fact that of the 1,144 CU attendees and staff who had tested positive, only one needed hospitalization and that person was quickly treated and released without being admitted to the ICU or needing a ventilator.
Zayach could have further added that because the health department closely monitors the spread of COVID-19 in the non-cu population, that the rest of us were safe, too. He could have stated that since CU began classes Aug. 24, fewer than 10 county residents in total had been admitted to a hospital in Boulder County due to COVID-19, about the same number that were admitted in the month before CU started up.
He could have also stated that no one in Boulder County had died due to or with COVID-19 as a comorbidity since Aug. 21. In other words, he could have reassured the readers of the Daily Camera that the health department and CU were both on top of COVID-19.
If you still doubt that there is not a strong correlation between “cases” and deaths, take a look at the graphs of Boulder County data at USA Facts ( https:/ /usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19spread-map/state/ colorado/county/bouldercounty).
But the interview being published must have touched a nerve at Boulder County Health. The very next day, Zayach went off the deep end and ordered the most drastic shutdown in Boulder County since the pandemic started.
Every 18- to 22-year-old in the city of Boulder (CU student or not) could “not participate in gatherings of any size (e.g., larger that one), whether indoors, outdoors, on or off-campus, or with individuals of any age.” He also sent health inspectors to 36 addresses to slap “no one can leave this house” orders on the residents.
He warned those smarty pants frat boys, too. Leave this house and you could spend 90 days in jail and pay a $1,000 fine. Not to mention that you will be
“reported to the university for potential … expulsion.”
So why did Zayach go off the deep end? Because the health department’s stated goal with COVID-19 is to stop the spread of the virus, a nearly impossible goal with a contagious disease. That is why this newspaper prints a story just about every day with a headline that reads “County reports 35 (or 55 or 105…) new cases.”
That is how the health department feeds the newspaper and everyone else COVID-19 data. The headlines could just as easily and as factually say “County reports zero deaths” day after day. Or “County reports one new hospitalization.” You can draw your own conclusions as to why the county feels the need to continue reporting how many positive tests are recorded each day for a disease that no longer causes mass hospitalizations or deaths.
So my recommendation for Mr. Zayach? Read the Great Barrington Declaration ( https://gbdeclaration.org/). Written by three prominent experts in medicine and epidemiology (one from Harvard, one from Oxford and one from Stanford), the declaration presents an approach on how to deal with issues such as the CU “outbreak” that protects the most vulnerable while allowing the rest of us to get back to life without jeopardizing our health or that of our neighbors.
In addition to presenting Zayach with information he evidently does not normally see, it also might just help him with his next interview by the Daily Camera.