Aaron Hartman, MD outlines a strategy for controlling COVID-19: maintain social isolation while rapidly scaling up testing to find and isolate positive cases. He cites data showing 86% of cases in Wuhan went undiagnosed and points to South Korea's success with aggressive testing as a model.
Questions this video answers
Aaron Hartman, MD.
March 19, 2020.
About 86%.
About 79%.
Richmond.
Chapters
Everybody, it is about 7:30, 8:00 clock on Thursday morning. I was doing some reading this morning. I want to do a quick update about what I came across this morning. I'm going to title this way Moving Forward. And so I usually do my reading in the morning, studying and actually came across an interesting article that I might flip around. I'm going to put it on social media, I guess I can't flip around while I'm recording. Okay. But basically the article looked at the cases of looking at China, like how do we do what we're doing? How do we stop this from going forward? And so looked at Wuhan, China and actually looked at the number of cases and There are about 86% of the cases went undiagnosed, which correlates with what we know here in the United States. And that was prior to the travel ban. So what they calculated using basic statistics is if they had enacted the travel ban earlier and not delayed about a month with their data, they could have decreased the spread of the virus about 79%. Okay, that's interesting. So travel ban stops spread 79%. And then it also went on to talk about what they've done in South Korea, which is heavy testing, testing, social isolation. But then the people that are positive, actually you get them out of the population. And so that's how the South Koreans shut this down. So based on this article, it really came out, it shows us a way forward. And the way forward is we've already started part one, which is the social isolation. We're all at home right now hanging out. You know, I'm still working, I'm getting ready to go to work right now actually. But doing that for four weeks while we ramp up the testing. If we can ramp up the testing and then get the people that have, who look like they have this virus, the people with a fever and a respiratory tract infection, dry cough, muscle aches, you know, systemic symptoms, respiratory tract symptoms and a fever, which is a flu like illness. We get those people tested and we can, we can separate out those who actually have the COVID 19 infection, then we can have a similar outcome to what South Korea had. So what I'm encouraging people to do first and foremost is to stick with the social isolation because that's your part right now. It's what you can do. Next thing is we need to push with our legislators, local governments. Yesterday afternoon, Richmond started their first drive through testing center. And we need to reserve that for people who have fever, cough, respiratory symptoms. We need to push to get mass testing and that's where people calling the legislators, emailing them on social media, just having a push, like we need to push this to make our, our government do what we need them to do, which is to take, I don't want, don't want to say take care of us, but help us to block this. What the people can do is basically right. We're doing right now, social isolation. If we get the mass testing, we can have a similar outcome to what South, South Korea's had. The other thing as well that this did show is that because they relax on the travel ban, that's what actually made it spread throughout China and then ultimately to the rest of the world and helped us to be a pandemic. So the fortunate thing in the United States is we put our travel ban in sooner so we don't have as much of a concern. But we need to now do the hard work of now doing aggressive testing to find out who actually has this, keep them out of the population, keep our social distancing. And the plan would be for us to have a similar outcome to what South Korea's had, where they've had not tons of deaths, they've kept it wrapped up and their culture, things are opening back up there, China's opening back up. So right now we don't have a coherent plan here in the United States. So that's what we need to look for. So my encouragement is a way forward. There is, there's a new published data article and I'll try later on today or tonight to get this put on social media so people who, those who want to look at, can look at it, but which is going to be what we're doing now and then pushing for mass testing again. Look for that in your area, if your friends meet the criteria. Right now, the one in Richmond is very limited as far as what they're allowing people to do, but we need to push our government say, look, you know, if you can't handle this, how can we trust you with, you know, talking about nationalized healthcare system if we can't get everybody? One single test makes me concerned they need to prove themselves right now to us. That might not be the right way to say things, but the gist is that's part of one of the things that they need to do is provide this mass testing to keep people out of primary care clinics, to keep people out of the emergency room departments. We don't want to clog up. The point is we don't want to clog up the healthcare system. We want to take these 85%, 80, 85% of people that have this, they're going to get it, ultimately, and keep them out of the system and keep them away from people. So I'll put that out there a little later on as I as I come across stuff, I probably will do more of these really quick. You know, I've read some of my thoughts about things I'm reading. I think this is very, very helpful because it shows us there's actually a way we can nip this in the bud if we're aggressive with it. Now, we've actually started the first part strong, which is the social isolation, the testing part, little weak. But we actually have time to make up with this because everything's shut down. So you have a great day. So stay safe, stay healthy. We'll talk soon.
