Here & Now

Epidemiologist Warns to Take COVID Rise Seriously

Frederica Freyberg:

It’s been another record setting week of COVID-19 numbers in Wisconsin, including the first day of over 1,000 positive cases reported. Secretary of Health-designee Andrea Palm said there are two main reasons for the continued increase.

Andrea Palm:

These numbers are at least in part a reflection of two patterns. A significant number of cases that reported attending gatherings like parties and bars and barbecues and an increase in cases among young people.

Frederica Freyberg:

We take Wisconsin’s alarming COVID-19 numbers to Minnesota now where we are joined by one of the nation’s top epidemiologists, Dr. Michael Osterholm. He’s the director of the Center for Infectious Disease at the University of Minnesota. Doctor, thanks very much for being here.

Michael Osterholm:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wisconsin has seen a surge in positive cases charting day over day, record numbers just this week. Why is this happening now?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, this virus is doing what it was made to do. Infect humans. And the only thing we can do to stop that from happening is how we distance ourselves from people. How we make sure that we are not sharing air with each other. That is where the virus is largely being transmitted now. And unfortunately, around Memorial Day, we decided that we were done trying to deal with the virus and we went on to our everyday lives as we had largely done before and the virus now is being transmitted at levels that are very concerning.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you make of the fact that people don’t seem to understand that or be willing to distance?

Michael Osterholm:

Well, you know, at this point, I think we are going to be seeing some changes in that. Only because when this all started, it seemed to be a blue state or a red state or blue county or red county kind of event. And what’s happening is it’s really becoming a COVID color event, where we are seeing more and more cases occurring in urban and rural areas. We are seeing more deaths in people we know, in loved ones. And in the end when you think about the fact that right now about 8 to 9% of the U.S. population has been infected with this virus to date, you think about all the pain and suffering, economic disruption and deaths that have occurred just with that 8 to 9%, think what it’s going to take to get us to probably 50 to 70% of the population infected before we would reach what we call herd immunity, or a state where the transmission would slow down. Now we are hoping we can truly get a vaccine to be available before we get there through illness, but rather through protection with a vaccine. But over the next 6 to 10 months at a minimum, we are going to see lots and lots of this transmission unless people understand that this, you know, we won’t win a debate with this virus. You have a better chance of winning a debate with 2,000 tired, angry 2 year olds than you do with this virus. And I think that’s what people just have not understood yet.

Frederica Freyberg:

Did it surprise you that this virus turned red and blue or political?

Michael Osterholm:

You know, given the conditions in the country before this pandemic began, and realizing that it goes to the very heart of who we are as a society in terms of economic issues. It’s accentuating all the challenges we’ve had with class and financial security, it’s not surprising. I think the point though is if there was ever a time that anything could and should rally us to come together, it’s about this virus. This is not an issue about, you know, one political party or one skin color or one geographic location. It’s about us against the virus. And if we could just stick with that. If we can understand that we are all in this to help each other, I think that that will surely be a start for us to actually have more impact on this virus. Please don’t forget, there are lessons to be learned here that have already happened. If we look at many of the countries around the world, earlier this spring that were in the same dire straits we were when we saw this virus going through New York and places like that, causing the damage, these countries stayed the course. They got the virus levels down to a very low level and then they could use testing and contact tracing to try to keep them down. We never did that. We decided we were done before we got those numbers down like that and now you are seeing the situation and I think it’s not until we actually take some more extreme measures: to do a re-do, to try to get the numbers down, to try to do the testing, contact tracing, follow up before we are going to see really a reduction in these cases. They are just going to continue otherwise.

Frederica Freyberg:

If we did a re-do, could we reduce the infection rate to, say, near 0 before we could see a vaccine?

Michael Osterholm:

You know, look at all the other countries in the world that have done it. Some will say it’s the Asian countries. They’re unique. Well there’s also the European countries. They have done it too. And so I think it’s very possible. We surely have the tools here in this country. It’s do we have the political will to do it? And how are we going to take care of those who might suffer under further restrictions. Economically, people need to work. People need to have jobs. People need to be able to send their kids to school. We know all those things. As a society and for the next year, we have to understand we may be having just our COVID year. Whether it’s about schools. Whether it’s about work. Whether it’s about what we do publicly. Let’s just get over our COVID year. Get it done. Get it behind us and move on. But if we don’t address those things, we are just going to be in this limbo land where basically you are going to see a huge forest fire of this virus transmission through this country and it’s looking for every piece of human wood it can burn and it will find many of them.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to a vaccine, how far are we from having an effective one?

Michael Osterholm:

This is the trillion dollar question. We will have vaccines. We have over 200 vaccines that are being evaluated to see how they protect. The challenge we have — this is a coronavirus, which historically we’ve had really an unsatisfactory ability to develop a vaccine that might provide durable immunity or long-term immunity. And so one of the things we’re challenged with right now, when we find an effective vaccine, what does it mean? What if it protects only 50% of the population and it is not the population that is most at risk for serious disease. That’s a vaccine. Is that considered acceptable? What if we find a vaccine that only works for 6 to 12 or 18 months and we’re going to have to keep re-vaccinating like we do for influenza, which on an international level would be an incredible effort to be able to do that. So there’s just a lot of questions left and finally we want to assure it’s safe. And we’re going to have to make some decisions about when to go forward with this vaccine. We can’t wait for five years to find out how durable the immunity is before we use it. We are going to be doing intensive studies looking at the potential for reactions with the vaccine early on. We’re just going to have to keep following that and also tell the public we’ll just keep them informed. Most of all, we need a vaccine. We are headed back to where we were in late April, early May. If you think about this, on the first week of March in the country, COVID-19 was not in the top 75 causes of death. By April, May, it was the number one cause of death every day. Now we saw those numbers come down as a result of the improvement but unfortunately they are going right back up and very possible soon COVID will again be the number one cause of death in this country.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there, Dr. Michael Osterholm, thank you very much for joining us and we hope to speak with you again.

Michael Osterholm:

Thank you.