Looking Back
This week we reached a milestone of our 50th Episode on COVID19 and we take a look back at our predictions of what we got right:
📏Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) key to mitigation
🛑There is no return to normal – we return to something different
🧪Testing critical to mitigation
🌮Office considerations including for employees, visitors, and locations such as break rooms
🧠 Predicting the huge increase in Stress and Anxiety
What did we get wrong:
🧼 Along with everyone else the over-emphasis on surface fomite transmission, important but not as much as aerosol and droplet spread?
Where do we see this going?
📉 Downturn in cases continues
🌏 Other countries vaccine roll out offer hope
🔬 All the positive changes that scientific progress has brought
🧬 New vaccine platform for other diseases
Join Dr Luis Saldana, Fred and myself for our COVID Insights to Action Discussion webinar taking place every Wednesday at 4pm ET. Our training modules are available to help businesses, education facilities and employers get their employees, staff, customers and students back to work and school safely in the context of COVID19
Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Hi, this is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business better health.
Fred Goldstein
And I’m Fred Goldstein with accountable health here working with Nick and others to help employers bring their employees back. But also consider the longer term implications of what you do post COVID and how you keep your employees healthy. Now, Nick, this is an unbelievable episode, we have now hit our 50th episode discussing COVID on a near weekly basis, I think we almost at the beginning, maybe skipped a week. But it’s incredible to think about it. And also to think about this over the longer term. I’m wondering, you know, what will the future generations of the Goldstein’s or kids think about when they see this and look back at this pandemic and what we’ve created? So I know you went back and looked at some of the early episodes, what did you find?
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, so I did a little bit more than that. I look back on some history. And in fact, this was the week that we were thinking about going to hims and hims was still on, they had invited the President, I think, to sort of try and force the issue and there was lots of consternation about it. We ran our first episode. And you know what, I have to say we did a really good job. And you know, the good news is an awful lot of times people make predictions and they never get called out or you know, you can’t prove disprove. This is a long video, I can actually point to it. It’s online, it’s available. So you know, there’s no faffing around here. So, first off, we said the mainstay of prevention is ppi. So that’s not or NP I’m sorry, nonpharmaceutical interventions. We were looking at China and Italy as the two sort of extremes of, you know, doing well or not. I said very specifically, we missed the boat in terms of prevention. And we were just in a mitigation strategy. This particular Genie was out of the bottle, and we were not going to recover fully any kind of return to normal. In fact, we said specifically, there is no return to whatever it was we have before it’s going to be a new normal. And Fred, you called out, you know, the whole issue for employees. And the fact that they have to think about visitors as well and the fact that they’re coming in and we had, I don’t want to say a miss, but it wasn’t quite exactly on target. We talked about surfaces. But you absolutely nailed one of the hotspots in employee locations, which is the break room where people can take off their masks, you know, and the need for sort of reconsidering it, you know, absolutely nailed a brilliant strategy at the time, which said, Hey, turn into shift work, do you know multiple shifts that you can reduce the number of brilliant suggestion? And then finally, I think your biggest call out absolutely on the head, we’re gonna see a big increase in stress and anxiety. That’s what you said, I’m going yeah, absolutely. We’re seeing that. What about you? What did you remember from all of this?
Fred Goldstein
Well, you know, it’s fascinating, because one, thanks for the call out. But obviously, I was deep into learning as much as I could about this and reading everything I could find. And I think you’ve obviously talked about that numerous times since then, of how deeply you’ve gone into understanding the virus and reading research papers and the rest of it. And we were just trying to synthesize all of this data. I do remember, it was a very sort of stressful time, because as you said, hymns were going, it’s canceled, work was canceled, certain things we were doing were canceled. And, you know, I look back on that and realize, you know, I was we’re probably a little bit stiff in it. I know, certainly over the course of 50 episodes, I’ve gotten a little bit more of a grounding and a relaxed feel about doing these, which has been great. learned a lot. But it’s it’s interesting to look back and realize, yes, things have changed. But some of it very clearly has has gone on and just continue this idea that we have to keep distance, that yes, it’s out, but we can still do something about it. And then, you know, tracking what’s happened over time has just been fascinating. I think, you know, from my perspective, it’s been interesting to watch how it’s impacted me, my family, my friends, and neighbors and colleagues, individuals. And it’s been profound, as you said, it’s a new normal. And it’s, it’s gonna be different.
Nick van Terheyden
So I just want to call out your family. Because in the first episode, I had the Golden Gate Bridge, I didn’t have some fancy schmancy background, but I do courtesy of your family. In fact, one of your sons created this in the same way that I think he did for you. And I improved my look, I think I think it’s better, don’t you?
Fred Goldstein
Oh, absolutely. And one of the things I also thought about was, what I’ve learned during this and new skills I’ve developed, and that’s part of it, I had to pivot weren’t changed. Suddenly, it’s more on zoom, suddenly, I’m recording things, and doing webinars and having to learn new skill sets, which has been great. And I sort of worry about individuals who are who are not, I don’t want to say stuck, but they’re in a job that they can’t necessarily keep doing. And so now we’re seeing this whole issue of unemployment and the impact on people, essential workers, etc. That is really, as we talked about, created additional stressors for families throughout this country and around the world, that we’ve got to find better ways to solve this stuff. And I think that’s one of the things I hope as we move forward, we begin to do.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, I would agree. I mean, this has been a travesty. But hopefully, our experiences been, you know, this is a pivot finding new ways to do perhaps some of the same things, but do them differently. We and you know, for me, it was a lot of video editing, I had to learn and also, you know, building out more of a green screen, I’ve done some of that, you know, certainly I’ve learned a tremendous amount. And I think for the people that were right at the inflection point, you know, maybe starting out that was probably the biggest challenge. If you were sort of just coming out there trying to find a job, how do you find your way? And I think we’re gonna be seeing that with your call out of anxiety and stress in the balance of what’s left any predictions where, you know, over a year in, where do you think we’re going?
Fred Goldstein
Gosh, I’m sort of seeing this divergent viewpoint. One of them is we’re seeing numbers come down, which is great. We had the big blip from the holiday season up that sucker went, I watched it in Florida hit 20,000. We’re now running mid 567 1000. It’s still a high number. But people some people are starting to talk about maybe we’re over the hump, the next big kicker will be less than it was before. And so I’m hopeful that that is in fact the case. And I think we can begin to see things reopened in a smart manner. We’re seeing some results at Israel that so hopefully we get there. I don’t want to see where these variants are and who knows how far they go in terms of mutations before we get everyone vaccinated. Hopefully, we’re seeing this downward trend now.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, I would agree. I think we don’t fully understand why we see this, you know, extended or on more of a downward trend than you would expect based on what’s going on. And we’re still to understand that, as of I think it was Friday was the approval. For a third vaccine, so we have three vaccines, and this one is a single shot, we’ve got a massive number of available doses and a huge ramp up, that’s opportunity for the rest of the world, huge potential. You know, the key here is not to let the brights off in terms of the NPI, before we suppress all of this to your point of the variance. But I got a couple of comments relative to that one, we’ve developed this new messenger RNA vaccine platform that has the potential to pivot and create new vaccines for these variants very quickly and be effective. And we’ve just seen some evidence of that platform being used for some other diseases. In this case, malaria, which has been intractable kills many, many people, especially in Africa, my home country. So for me, that’s exciting. The explosion of opportunity is just fantastic. So I wouldn’t have wish this on anybody. But let’s capitalize on all these changes that we brought about and all the exposures of the poor things in the health system. Let’s fix all that. Let’s not just sweep it under the carpet and ignore it, because now it’s not a problem anymore.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah, and I’m going to make one more prediction. We will not do a 100th episode on COVID. Hopefully, we have pivoted to something else, and moved on 50 is plenty. We’ll keep you up to date on what’s going on. If you’d like more information, please feel free to reach out to either one of us or go to veilig health.com I’m Fred Goldstein with accountable health. Thank you so much for sticking with us through these 50 and we hope we provided you with some valuable information.
Nick van Terheyden
And I’ve got to make I’m the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business, better health.
