By this time everyone is getting tired of each other. We want to get out of the house, have the kids back in school, go to our favorite coffee shop, watch some sports, get dinner at a proper sit-down restaurant. Everyone wants that – not just the right wing protestors, everyone.

We listen to every word about a new potential drug or vaccine that will save us and allow us to return to normalcy. Do you remember when you said, “Good Riddance” to 2019? Then came the Novel Virus – and then came the pandemic. Then came the isolation and the business closures.

Then you hear things like “the cure can’t be worse than the disease” and everyone who had any job that was in jeopardy, or who had lost their job, listened. We all listened. We knew Easter wasn’t going to happen.

So let us get politics out of the way and talk about what can we do to open things that won’t kill you, or substantially burden the healthcare system. Things we can implement now. We have all waited and waited for testing – it has been over a month that I wrote about how with proper testing we could reopen the economy, but we are just not there yet. So here are a few things we can do now.

Isolate and Quarantine the Sick Not Everyone

Sure sounds good doesn’t it. But how do we tell? Our first jab at this was to tell everyone – tests will tell us. How many tests do we need? A lot, about 3-5 million per day. We are nowhere near the capability to test people but we can screen them. Screen means we ask a few questions and take a temperature – testing means we get a nasal swab, or spit, or blood to check someone.

Screening people means asking a few questions and taking a temperature. If you pass that simple screening then there is about 90% of a chance you do not have COVID19. This requires people to be honest, or to have an honest explanation for the symptoms. The symptoms: do you have a new cough, new and/or unexplained muscle aches, loss of smell, new or unexplained headaches, shortness of breath, chills, diarrhea. And then check a temperature. When this was examined in Washington, it was able to capture the symptoms of 90% of the people who had COVID19.

Screening stations can be set up easily and if you pass this simple screen then you can enter various retail establishments. It is a pass. At the hospital we screen everyone who enters and those who fail the screening are sent to the Emergency Room for further evaluation. Screening stations can be set up and we can give you a card for the day allowing you to enter a barber, salon, restaurant, etc.

Schools

Public health officials argue over the best way to tell if a community is about to be infected with COVID19. Some state that we should test sewage to see if there is evidence of COVID19. That is effective but more so is opening up the schools again.

Before going to school every child has to be seen by a physician and either tested or screened.  We have a healthy baseline of the community. If someone falls out then their family is isolated and tested.

Daily, as kids come to school, their temperature is checked and they are asked the questions about school. If they have an issue they are sent to the nurse for more evaluation. Do we need more school nurses- oh yes.

Hospitals

Yes, they have been kind of closed. Some hospitals are the economic engine of the economy for many cities. In Anchorage Southcentral Foundation is the number one employer, for example. We need them to get going so they can be the place to test and screen people.

Plus, too many have waited with diseases that need care. People are afraid of doctors and hospitals – they need not be – these are the safest places.

Contact Tracing

When someone is found to have tuberculosis or a sexally transmitted disease (STD) the health department is notified and they send out people who are trained as contact tracers. They are very careful and take a history of the people who they have been in contact with. The idea is to find those people who might be at risk for the disease, contact and test them.

We need between 150,000 and 300,000 new employees to do this. We do have enough people in our economy who can be trained to do this.

We would use contact tracers to follow up on those who screen out poorly, or who test positive for COVID19. That way we can find those they have been in contact with – test and isolate if needed.

Technology will help, since we can use most modern cell phones to see where people have been and who they have been close to. This will greatly help in our efforts to isolate and quarantine the ill. Yes, it is big brother, but most of us are too boring to be bothered. We want to open things up and this will help that. And it will help you- imagine if you get a call that someone who was very ill was near you for about ten minutes- you need to check for these symptoms and stay low for a few days. That would be helpful.

Testing

There are several tests available. The nasal swab tests to see if you have the virus and are shedding it. Now a new report states that spit can do the same thing. There are blood tests to see if someone has antibodies against the virus – if they do, we can give them a pass for a year. Testing has been slow to ramp up – want to blame someone -go ahead, but it has been too slow.

Nasal swab and spit tests use something called PCR – a polymerase chain reaction – to see if you have the RNA made from the virus. Blood tests tell us if you have antibodies against the virus.