Dr. Gold Discusses Coronavirus In Virtual Town Hall With Congressman Jeff Fortenberry

NEBRASKA CITY –  Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb)  held a telephone town hall meeting Thursday evening with Dr. Jeffrey Gold of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Questions asked included the possibility of a Democratic hoax, biological weapon, conspiracy to hurt President Trump's economy, paid worker leave and how long virus can survive on an uncleaned surface.

Difference between the flu and COVID-19?

Dr. Gold: “This year in the United States we will probably going to have between 22 and 24 million cases of influenza. Probably 300,00 people will get hospitalized and about 20 or 22,000 will, unfortunately, pass away because of the flu.

“So we are nowhere near that level. But we do have effective vaccines and therapies for the flu. We understand the spread and contagion factors and how to control that in our society, we do not have anywhere near that degree of sophistication with this virus. Hopefully, we will gain that over time, but only time will tell.”

What is the criteria for testing?

Dr. Gold said the current criteria is that anyone with an influenza like illness and is referred to a state public lab or their own health care professional or has exposure to somebody warrants to be tested.

Dr. Gold said the testing protocols at the medical center have been approved by the CDC and FDA.

Dr. Gold said he expects adequate testing.

Gold: “It’s going to vary a little by demand, regionally, because shipment, you know, if you would spend a day shipping a specimen back and forth that wastes a lot of time. We can actually turn the test around in about three hours.”

Medical Center capabilities?

Dr. Gold said the med center offers three levels of care – quarantine, isolation and biocontainment. 1. Quarantine  is used for people who do not have symptoms or a confirmed infection, but have exposure. The medical center says quarantine 14 days or the government places a quarantine state like that at Camp Ashland.

2. Isolation is very different than quarantine. Isolation is for people who have highly suspicious symptoms or confirmed infections. The people from the Diamond Princess who we knew were infected were placed in an isolation unit.
3. Biocontainment is another level. It is being hospitalized for people we know are infected with this virus.

Can people afford to be tested?

Fortenberry: “If you have private insurance, it’s covered. If you’re on Medicaid it’s covered. If you do not have insurance and you go to a public health facility then you can receive the test for free.”

What about America’s food supply as impact on health?

Fortenberry: “Obviously there is growing awareness that food is medicine and nutrition has a critical  part in well being. The part is has in stopping this pandemic, I’ll let doc say that, but obviously it goes to the heart of how you keep yourself well.”

Dr. Gold: “Two levels of comments. It’s not just food, but it’s exercise, it’s sleep, it’s not using tobacco and other such things, substance abuse. All of those things go into the wellness and resiliency of our population and certainly the healthier you are when you’re well the better you will withstand any infection, trauma. No matter what befalls you, you’re going to do better.

Dr. Gold: “Going back to the 20-year example, this virus has probably lived in bat caves for a long, long time. It wasn’t until it mutated and changed its own RNA structure, its own genetic structure, allowed it to live in human beings.

“That is an unpredictable phenomenon. If  that happens in a small village halfway around the world and 10 people get infected and die from it, you never hear about it, but it’s because it spread so rapidly and was so contagious, in this particular category of corona virus of which MERZ and SARs are other good examples of corona virus, that we were able to see this occur so widely, not only in central China in the Hubei province and Wuhan, but now widely around the world.”

“To your point, the better, the healthier we are, the better prepared we are, the more resilient we are – but that’s not going to stop these viruses from mutating unfortunately.”

Will warm weather help as it does with flu?

Dr. Gold: “Corona virus are not as temperature sensitive as flu viruses are. The only benefit that we will have, as the weather get warmer, we don’t stay in our homes and offices so much, we get outside more, so it removes some of the clustering of people … the hope is over the next summer months into the early fall that we will actually reduce it.”

President Trump had mentioned this is a Democratic hoax, but Republicans are self-quarantining, so is the President still thinking it’s a Democratic hoax?

Fortenberry said the broad purpose of the call is to ask Dr. Gold questions about the virus. He said there is bipartisan work in Congress to pass an emergency supplemental bill that the President did sign into law.

Is it right for government to bail out Wall Street first and worry about workers later?

Fortenberry: “The paid leave issue is a very important one to me personally and to many other people. Like anything in Washington it has to be negotiated because there are costs associated with it, the length of time that you do that for, how does that fit into a broader plan, as well as stimulus -- that you understandably pointed to -- as a first response.”

If social distancing is the best preventative measure, why aren’t we closing schools down?

Fortenberry: “You see a number of schools, starting on the East Coast, have kids refrain from coming back from spring break …

“I think you are going to see more and more of that as disease prevalence occurs. A lot of these decisions. Again we have a decentralized health system. We have a dualistic health system. We have a certain centralization of health system, policies run by Washington, and then policies implemented locally.

“These decisions tend to be made more locally on a case-by-case basis.

I do think we ought to move aggressively and look at closures of schools and other major public events to try and head off the spread of this disease.”

Dr. Gold: “University of Nebraska is going to remote education …”

How long can the virus live on surfaces and be contagious?

Dr. Gold: “Typical cleaning , indeed even if you just wash your hands with soap and water, wash your surfaces with soap and water, will remove the overwhelming number of virus and frankly help an awful lot. You know, if you do your ABCs or sing Happy Birthday twice or do your own way of counting 20 seconds of wash, but that is an important consideration. Some of the Clorox-based cleaners are extremely effective.

Dr. Gold: “To the first part of your question, we are studying here with great rigor how long the virus can last on a surface. There was early information that it could actually last several hours to even more than a day on a surface if untreated.

“Some of the follow up  – and this is all coming out of China – some of the follow up information shows that it is much shorter than that.”

“It’s one of the advantages of the research that is being done at the med center. We are looking at all of these types of very practical considerations, of surface contamination, aerosol spread, what does it mean if you get it on your clothing, all of those sorts of simple things. What if you get it on an eating utensil, does a simple run through a dishwasher solve the problem. The answer is probably yes, but we will confirm all of that.”

Sandy: “I wonder if that evil bunch in the Congress … plus others …I wonder if they are behind this whole thing , a conspiracy with China to overthrow Trump. You know what he has done for the economy. Could this be a biological weapon?”

Fortenberry: “The primary consideration here, it is some type of animal to human transmission …

Dr. Gold, do you want to give any incites on the possibility that this could have been a manipulated virus in a lab that got released?”

Dr. Gold: “I have read a lot of that type of theory that has come through social media and other such things, I’m not aware of any facts that support that. While it may be of great relevance to our government and to the Department of Defense moving forward, the practical matter is we are dealing with an unprecedented spread. No matter where it may have started, whether is started in a bat cave and then went through these little animals … into wet markets with live animals in China or some other means, our focus here at the university is to deal with the reality of the situation both locally in Nebraska and nationally. We’ve got our handfuls doing that.”

Biological weapon?

Fortenberry said the question about biological weapons is difficult.

Fortenberry: “It’s going to take a surge of diplomacy and multilateral mission understanding as to how we get ourselves as a common human family to the place where this kind of threat is never made real, but that possibility does exist out there. It’s just a sad reality of the fallen human nature and the nature of what sometimes people with bad intentions want to do to us.”