EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on a COVID-19 presentation given by Dr. Doug Ross, president of CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs, during the most recent meeting of Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club.
Cassidy Kendall
The Sentinel-Record
As of Wednesday, CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs had zero COVID-19 positive patients, Dr. Doug Ross, CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs president, told Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club during its most recent video teleconference.
The club meetings, held on Zoom, have taken the place of Rotary's weekly noon luncheons at the Arlington Resort Hotel and Spa.
"Even if we did, we are going to keep them in the farthest corner of the hospital, away from everybody else," Ross said. "We are going to make sure everyone is masked, we are going to make sure everyone's got those temperature checks. We are going to keep people safe; we really, really need to get folks back in the health care system."
After nearly 10 weeks of Zoom meetings, Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club continued to practice its "new normal" this week and kept COVID-19 at the forefront by having Ross as the guest speaker on Wednesday.
Ross said the Rotary meeting was a good opportunity to "connect the dots on a couple of things."
"I'm going to skip on some symptoms and how it's spread and all those types of things," he said. "I think if you've been watching the news and getting on the internet you're probably pretty well-versed on that. ... But what I thought I might do is focus on a couple of areas of questions I keep getting."
Ross began with saying COVID-19 is a coronavirus, and coronaviruses are not "new."
"They're actually the cause of the common cold," he said. "So a question I get pretty commonly is if coronaviruses cause the common cold, what's different about COVID-19?"
The challenge with coronaviruses, Ross said, is when a virus mutates or changes, two things can happen: it can mutate and become less infectious, less dangerous and less of a problem, or it can mutate and become more infectious, more deadly and more of a problem -- "and that's what's happened with COVID."
"It's a new virus," he said. "When we catch a cold or we catch kind of a virus, our body's immune system will gear up to fight that virus and then as we get healthy we actually develop some immunity in what we call 'memory cells,' and these memory cells actually will remember that virus so that if it encounters that virus or even a similar virus again, the body's immune system will actually gear up much more rapidly and much more aggressively to kill that virus a second time around."
Ross said the problem with COVID-19 is that it has mutated "so differently" that it has never been seen before, which is also why it is spreading "so dramatically" across the world.
"And then where do we go from here?" he asked.
"I know there's a lot of work on vaccines; you've probably seen that in the news," Ross said. "I would caution everybody to not push that too fast as it takes time to develop a vaccine and to make sure that vaccine is safe. We don't want to push out a vaccine that actually causes more problems than it actually helps."
He said he doesn't look for a "wide-scale" vaccine for COVID-19 until, at best, early 2021.
"And then, how does the virus slow down?" he asked.
"Either through a vaccine, or so many people catch the virus that we develop herd immunity, which is basically that so many people in the community have already caught the virus and already developed immunity, the virus has nowhere else to spread," Ross said.
In addition to talking about COVID-19's direct impact on the community and the world, Ross also discussed the indirect impact of the virus deterring people from entering the hospital when needed.
"If there's nothing else you remember from my talk today, maybe this can be your takeaway: We are seeing a trend, which is pretty concerning, is that people are staying away from the health care system because of fears of COVID," he said. "So we are seeing people having heart attacks at home, we are seeing people having strokes at home because they don't want to come to the hospital for fears of COVID."
Ross said even with something as "simple and fairly routine" as gallbladder surgery, COVID-19 is deterring people from coming in.
"I spoke to one of our surgeons the other day; he said the last couple of gallbladders he's taken out have been so, so challenging and these patients are spending a couple of nights in the ICU after gallbladder surgery because they've waited so long because of fears of coming into the health system for COVID," he said.
Pre-COVID-19, the health care system communicated that if you have chest pain, you need to get to your doctor or to the ER to make sure that chest pain is not a heart attack, Ross said.
"Now that COVID has happened," he said, "when folks are having chest pain, I think they're just staying at home and saying 'eh, it's probably just indigestion, or it's probably just heartburn,' and they're not making that decision to get into our ERs and unfortunately, folks are at times making bad decisions that can actually cost you your life."
Ross said that COVID-19 can "certainly" cause severe disease, and CHI St. Vincent has even seen it cause death in its facility. However, "for the most part," patients who catch COVID-19 have "very mild" symptoms or no symptoms.
"And if you look at things statistically, the complications from missed heart attacks, and strokes, and other types of things, are much, much more dangerous than COVID," he said. "So, unfortunately we have people making some poor decisions. I think that's really something where this Rotary family can help with their neighbors and fellow co-workers and those types of things, is spreading the word that, as I mentioned before, we are going to keep you safe."
HSNP Rotary President Michelle Ratcliff said meeting via Zoom has been "great," and said the average of 30% participation from club members that they've encountered with the Zoom meetings is considered "very high."
"I think we had 58 people on our first meeting, which is a very high percentage," Ratcliff said. "But everyone has done well; I think everyone has become much more accustomed to Zoom, so they understand muting themselves and using the chat and raising their hand to speak, so everyone is a lot more organized with it."
The club will wait on guidance from the CDC and the governor before deciding when to meet again in person, she said.
As for choosing Ross as this week's guest speaker, Ratcliff said his information was both "relevant" and "refreshing."
"Hearing his information was really refreshing to hear how well Garland County is doing in relation to the pandemic and how everyone is being so cautious and careful wearing masks and wearing gloves, that we have such low numbers from that standpoint," she said.
Local on 05/24/2020