In the wake of recent health misinformation, ETSU’s College of Public Health hosted a virtual fact-sharing session regarding COVD-19 questions.
The event titled “Coronavirus: Separating Fact from Fiction” opened at 6 p.m. on Tuesday and was the first of the college’s ongoing Leading Voices in Public Health lecture series to take place during the 2020-2021 academic year. While it initially aired on Zoom, a recording of the meeting is also available on the college’s YouTube page.
The talk featured three keynote speakers who focused on three facets of the pandemic:
Dr. Randy Wykoff, dean of the college of public health, spoke to the timeline of COVID-19’s spread across the globe.
Dr. Jonathan Moorman, professor and chief of the division of infectious diseases within the Quillen College of Medicine spoke to the mechanics, symptoms and treatment of the virus itself.
Dr. David Kirschke, medical director of the Northeast Regional Health Office within the Tennessee Department of Health, spoke about the impacts experienced within Northeast Tennessee.
Wykoff’s presentation provided perspective on the magnitude of the virus, citing comparisons to historic diseases. Within the U.S., COVID-19 has become the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease.
“It is important to point out if you look at the 25 worst pandemics in recorded history, COVID-19 is already in the top 20 with over a million deaths,” said Wykoff. “Now, the world population changes a lot and has changed a lot, but nonetheless, this just tells you that this is an important pandemic. It’s a major cause of death worldwide.”
Wykoff also described the changes in places where COVID-19 is taking root as Europe, South America and India are facing spikes and the American Midwest is experiencing a surge in cases.
Moorman went on to describe the known specifics of the disease, such as its distinct symptom of loss of taste or smell and potential treatments that are undergoing testing and FDA approval.
Remdesivir, a recently FDA approved medication, was found to be better than a placebo at reducing recovery time and seems to have an impact on mortality rates, but Moorman says the data behind it is relatively weak.
“It certainly is not the knockout drug we expected it to be,” said Moorman. “As I told you, Remdesivir works on probably an RNA polymerase, but it is not specific to the COVID RNA polymerase, and if I’ve learned anything from HIV and all the years and years of drug development for HIV, most drugs have to be very specific to work very well on viruses.”
Kirschke spoke about the statistics of Northeast Tennessee, sharing that the age group that makes up the largest share of cases in the region are 20 to 29 years old.
“We know there’s lots of social interaction,” said Kirschke. “I always say that your lives are more interesting than us older people, so you have more social contacts. There’s more room for transmission, there’s also more asymptomatic spread so people don’t know they’re infected and are around other people.”
Kirschke explained that the high number of cases in younger people is not unexpected, but the goal is to reduce the chance that their cases spread to older groups that are at higher risk.
Afterwards, the meeting opened to a Q&A session with pre-submitted questions. The speakers tackled several topics from herd immunity to vaccine development, as well as their take on the CDC’s shifting guidelines.
“What we’re doing, well they’re doing, is adjusting to the pandemic and figuring out how to handle it best,” said Moorman. “That may lead to a change in policy — so be it, you have to do it based on the science that comes in.”
To watch the full presentation, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmMgop3R0gA.
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