Author: John Troidl

Yikes!

That's the message that will be sent out to various types of business and all places of worship next week if Yolo County does not avoid sliding into the "Purple Tier" of coronavirus status.

Question: Which businesses are involved?

Restaurants for sure. Gym/fitness centers. Movie theaters. Might be more but those are for sure. I sure hope that moving to PURPLE does NOT affect the Davis Farmers' Market! The Market Manager there has been very diligent about reminding people about mask wearing and has spread out the physical positioning of booths to reduce risk of virus transmission.

Question: When will we find out?

Next Tuesday, November 10th. The State of California will review our numbers for a two week period and if we are showing bad performance in the key coronavirus indicators, then they will issue a "Move to PURPLE" order. There is some room for negotiation if the numbers from the preceding 10 days are showing improvement.

Question: How do you keep up/find out more?

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Hey Folks,

Happy Election Day! Hope you are using your franchise to exercise your voting rights. I have. Feels downright American!!

While we await the results of today's election, we as a community are also awaiting the results of the State of California's determination if we are required, based on the numbers, to move to the more restrictive "PURPLE" category of coronavirus prevention and precaution.

You may have seen the article in Sunday's Davis Enterprise about this…. top of the fold, front page:

"COVID cases, hospitalizations up in Yolo County" By Anne Terns-Bellamy. Anne does a great job of laying out the reasons that we seem to be sliding into purple…. not good news for isolation weary residents or for our local businesses (read: Big part of our tax base).

So, what's going on?

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Due to new opportunities for voting, I have already voted. Filled out my ballot, went over to the Nugget Market and dropped my ballot in the official ballot box there. Boom! Another vote for Jim Provenza.

Why did I vote for Jim?

He's smart. He asks good questions. He listens to the answer. And then he makes thoughtful decisions.

During this pandemic he has done a masterful job of balancing the public health needs of the entire community and the needs of businesses. He has helped specific businesses stay open safely and helped many businesses generally by legally facilitating curbside pick up and home delivery for many businesses in Yolo County.

If you have not had a chance to talk to Jim personally… and he is quite personable, check out his performance at the live streamed Board of Supervisor Meetings. Jim does not hog the microphone but you can tell from his questions and comments that he has done his homework, he comes to the meetings prepared and ready to make a contribution.

Jim is competent, conscientious, and committed. And he knows the law. When the pandemic started, messaging from the County was English-only…. several of us went to the Supervisors and said "These communications must be in both English and Spanish because the Latino Community is suffering greatly from the Coronavirus Pandemic"….. Jim worked with the other supervisors and the Yolo County staff to ensure that the messaging was sent out in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.

Jim has demonstrated his competence in office…. at this time in our lives and livelihood in Yolo County, I urge you to vote for Jim Provenza for County Supervisor…. he'll work for us, for all of us!

Thanks,

John Troidl

PS If you are still not quite convinced by my endorsement check out the long list of supporters who want to re-elect Jim…. including Helen Thomson, who gave her strongest endorsement to Jim in a facebook posting. Check it out on his candidate FB page:
Jim-Provenza-for-Yolo-County-Board-of-Supervisors

Dear Friends,

Saw this interesting article about contact tracing, a key step to ending the quarantine. This article is from NPR and makes a state by state comparison on contact tracing:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/28/846736937/we-asked-all-50-states-about-their-contact-tracing-capacity-heres-what-we-learne

The CDC briefly describes contact tracing this way:

Key Concepts

• Trace and monitor contacts of infected people. Notify them of their exposure.
• Support the quarantine of contacts. Help ensure the safe, sustainable and effective quarantine of contacts to prevent additional transmission.
• Expand staffing resources. Contact tracing in the US will require that states, tribes, localities and territorial establish large cadres of contact tracers.
• Use digital tools. Adoption and evaluation of digital tools may expand reach and efficacy of contact tracers.

Seems like our Yolo County "Roadmap to Recovery" should include a plan for contact tracing in our county.  Here is the current version of the roadmap, which is a work in progress.

https://www.yolocounty.org/health-human-services/adults/communicable-disease-investigation-and-control/novel-coronavirus-2019/roadmap-to-recovery

Regards,

John

Dear Friends,

I can only imagine you saw this exciting headline in the LA Times or other paper (Davis Enterprise?): https://lat.ms/3aPlyaX

L.A. County and city announce free COVID-19 testing for all residents

This is terrific!

Meanwhile, how are we doing in Yolo County?  The Health Department updates the Yolo County Covid-19 Dashboard daily.  (Thank you!).  Here it is:

https://www.yolocounty.org/health-human-services/adults/communicable-disease-investigation-and-control/novel-coronavirus-2019/dashboard-and-documents

The Dashboard shows that 1990 tests have been done and since we have a population of 220,500 (how did we get THAT big?!) as of 2019, that means that slightly less than 1% of the population of Yolo County has been tested.

Oh.

Can we do better than that?

There have been 16 CV associated deaths in Yolo County (11 of residents of Long Term Care Facilities) and 163 confirmed cases (96 outside of Long Term Care Facilities).

So, that's 96 non-institutionalized cases in a population of 220,500.  Or .04% of the Yolo County population.  That is NOT 4% but four one hundredths of one percent.  

I am quite confident that more testing would reveal more cases… for one thing, the dashboard shows we have had cases all over the County.

Can we please do more testing?  

Regards,

John

PS  If Yolo County does not have the resources to do SIGNIFICANTLY more testing, perhaps we could join other Sacramento Metro health districts and scale up across the region.

Dear Friends,

Are you going to the Farmers' Market today?  You can buy health promoting food there which also happens to be fresh and tasty.

If you can't go, maybe your friends/neighbors can ask a "Designated Shopper" to go for several families and make a number of purchases.

If we don't support the vendors there now, they might not be there when we are out of quarantine.  

See what you can do!

John

Dear Davis Friends:

A good friend of mine from the Bay Area who has had a long career in health care shared information about participation in a research opportunity sponsored and managed by Stanford University School of Medicine.

Below the dotted line is a copy of what she sent me.

FYI, I signed up, it was easy.  And the research team will send me a simple check-in reminder each day with just a couple of questions.

Gives me a good opportunity to contribute to the scientific effort being put together to study this epidemic and begin to compile the data to allow public health authorities to make evidence-based public health decisions.  

Will you join me?

John Troidl

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COVID daily symptoms survey

Hi neighbors – Researchers at Stanford Medicine are conducting a daily symptoms survey, which will help inform the response to COVID-19. If you are not already participating, consider joining the survey. It’s really easy (the first survey takes less than a few minutes, and the daily check-ins take as few as a few seconds (literally…2 questions with populated buttons to select your answers) to a bit longer, potentially, if you need to go into detail about either of your answers. And they send you a daily reminder with a link that takes you to your personalized survey. Stay healthy. https://bw3gbcrs.r.us-east-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Fmed.stanford.edu%2Fcovid19%2Fcovid-counter.html/1/020000000dg30nn8-hqrj00ob-nbta-s04e-bt1q-j65fkvh7c6g0-000000/plz00nwIw5UuRzRn5CN2bsPDGjU=157

Stanford Medicine National Daily Health Survey for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Your involvement in the Daily Health Survey will hopefully help save lives. As a country, we are all in this together!

med.stanford.edu

 

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Dear Friends,

This link leads you to a 90 minute Q&A session with the top public health faculty at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health who are on the cutting edge of research on the corona virus as well as other vectors for infectious disease.

A half dozen or so faculty with deep expertise answer questions asked by the public regarding the most current and best thinking on this epidemic.  From pathophysiology to public policy, from discussion of medications and treatments, to developing a vaccine…. and a bit of commentary about transferring the virus to your pet…. this is a fascinating session.  

Consider sharing with your family:

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/03/30/coronavirus-science-and-solutions/

Enjoy,

John

PS  Wouldn't it be cool if we had a school of public health in the Capitol Region?? 

(Reminder:  Have been asked to share that I have training in public health and in management).

Many public health experts believe that South Korea responded to the corona virus properly.  A colleague of mine, the Clinic and Public Health Laboratory Operations Administrator at the San Francisco Department of Public Health shared this ~ 8 minute youtube video of South Korea's successful strategy and lessons for the US….it is quite well done and uses terrific graphics to make clear points. 

Probably something you want to share with friends and family members who are interested in understanding a reasonable path forward.

Regards,

John

(Like the Clinic and Public Health Laboratory Operations Administrator, I am trained in public health and health services management).

On Tuesday evening when Dr. Ron Chapman, Yolo County Health Officer addressed the Davis City Council to provide an update for them on the Corona Virus situation in Yolo County, I went to the Yolo County Corona Virus Dashboard and looked up the number of CV tests that had been done to date in Yolo County. Here's the URL for the Dashboard:

https://www.yolocounty.org/health-human-services/adults/communicable-disease-investigation-and-control/novel-coronavirus-2019/dashboard-and-documents

It is a very informative dashboard! 

Back to the number tested in all of Yolo County:  That figure was 721 CV tests.

That means that 721/215,802 (2016) Yolo County residents had been tested.  That's less than 1%.  To be precise it is 1/3 of one percent.

Today I saw the figure of people tested in Yolo County has gone up to 885 people.  So, 885 out of 215,802 = 0.0041.  Or 40% of one percent of the population.  Still less than 1% of the Yolo County population has been tested.

Now I am NOT faulting the Health Department, they have been underfunded for years.  But we have presence from FOUR big health systems here in Yolo County:  Sutter, UC Davis Health System, Dignity, and Kaiser. Plus a small number of Community Health Centers.

Can't the City of Davis ask the Big Four to step up and help the Health Department with some significant level of testing?  Can't the City of Woodland City Council ask the same when Dr. Chapman presents to them next week?  

The Public Health Department can only do so much on its own (and I hope you paid your property taxes because that helps pay for County services!) so, can we have a little help from the big providers of care to assist with widespread CV testing throughout the county? 

And do it SOON so that the sooner we can get our arms around this problem the sooner we can respond properly and then eventually the sooner we can all get back to work/school/normal life?

Thank you for your consideration.

John Troidl 

(I am trained in both public health and in health services management).