Saturday, April 18, 2020

Data against AL community spread

As Alabama progresses towards reopening its economy, the public will want to know about how community spread of the virus will be detected and how it will be contained by quick identification of infected persons, contact tracing, and testing of contacts.

Alabama Public Health has posted below links

 Alabama TV news should make it a priority to have ongoing coverage about how community spread of the virus will be detected in Alabama going forward and how it will be contained by quick identification of infected persons, contact tracing, and testing of contacts.

The starting point of this is information about the identification of infected persons, contact tracing, and testing of contacts that has previously taken place during the past weeks in Alabama. Alabama Public Health should be a source of information about this. Important aspects are how much information has been obtained from infected persons about what they did during the preceding two weeks, how comprehensive the contact tracing information has been, the extent of testing of contacts and quarantining of contacts. and the data base that was created regarding the same in Alabama.

From what has done previously, the plans of Alabama Public Health going forward need to be found out. On Capitol Journal last night, Dr. Scott Harris said Massachusetts had hired 1000 persons to be contact tracers and Alabama Public Health has assigned 50 persons to be contract tracers.


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Friday, April 10, 2020

How AL will open back up

Here is how Alabama will open back up in the face of the virus.

First, opening Alabama back up will not be done on a risk free basis, and there will be no guarantee that no Alabamian will get infected, and it is virtually certain there will continue to be infections.

In the opening up of Alabama, the risk of getting infected by the virus will be highly variable for different Alabamians in different situations.

Numerous factors will have bearing on the risk for any particular Alabamian getting the virus, including a person's own behavioral choices.

In evaluating the risk of getting infected, Alabamians will need guidance from pandemic experts, who  evaluate the risk in various geographic locations and situations in Alabama.

Such pandemic experts will need to consider whether outbreaks of coronavirus will be able to be "contained" based on surveillance capabilities, prompt identification of persons who are infected, contact tracing, prompt testing of contacts, quarantining of infected persons, and adequacy of hospital equipment and personnel for those needing hospitalization.

Such pandemic experts will need to make judgments about whether the virus can be contained under less rigorous social distancing. The validity of such judgments cannot be known for certain in advance, and there will need to be close monitoring of what happens after social distancing is relaxed, and there could be some trial and error in which tightening back up of social distancing is needed.

The foregoing may call for small steps in how social distancing is relaxed.

Let's say the pandemic experts look at Huntsville and say "we think, with such and such relaxation of social distancing, we can "contain"  hospital admissions in Huntsville to say five new cases a week."

The next step would be for the pandemic experts to present and explain to Huntsville government officials, employers and residents, the relaxed social distancing recommendations and protective sanitizing that should be done of public places, commercial establishments, schools, transportation facilities, wearing of masks, etc.

The Huntsville government officials will then need to decide whether they are willing to try the relaxed social distancing standards or perhaps more restrictive social distancing, and the suggested protective measures.

Then individual businesses in Huntsville will need to decide whether they want to open under the lesser social distancing guidelines and whether they want to have more restrictive social distancing they want to apply to their facilities. They would want to do this by talking to employees and learning what their preferences are.

Residents of Huntsville would be informed of all of the foregoing and make their own decisions about how much social distancing they want to practice for themselves and their families and about businesses they are willing to patronize.

In such an opening up of Huntsville, no one in Huntsville will be completely free of a risk of getting infected.

5/5/21 What happens now?
The scientists will fret about a virus mutation popping up against which the current vaccines don't work. The scientists will fret about the adequacy of surveillance to detect such a mutation  quickly. They will further fret, if such a mutation pops up, how resolutely mitigation practices of testing, tracing, and isolating will be followed, and how quickly a vaccine can be developed, tested, approved, and put in people's arms.

Those who have been vaccinated want to know how long they will be protected by their vaccinations and will want safe and effective booster shots to be available. For this, those persons will be relying on the current and new vaccine providers, and on continuation of mass distribution of the vaccine by the Federal government.

Businesses will be undertaking difficult transitioning from employees working remotely to getting them back into offices. This will include businesses deciding on protocols of whether they will or will not require proof of vaccination before an employee can go back into the office, and how those businesses will accommodate the preferences of employees regarding the same.

Businesses serving the public, such as retailers selling to customers who come into stores and restaurants, will be similarlh addressing the same questions from the perspective of employees and customers, and deciding on and implementing protocols.

Governmental authorities will be deciding on, and mandatorily imposing, or not, protocols for such businesses.

Schools, teachers, parents, and governmental authorities will be equally confronting similar questions for how education conducts its function. 

How successfully the U.S. is able to achieve herd immunity will be extremely important. This is uncertain right now.

Our nation's polarization and political bickering over just about everything important will affect the course of beating the virus and getting back to normal.
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