Doctor: more info, testing needed to combat coronavirus

Vaccines not the answer, Mills tells commissioners

Dr. Myron Mills stepped toward the Board of Kootenai County Commissioners and dropped his hands to his sides.

“This is the crux,” Mills said, looking toward an equation projected on the screen before them.

The fatality rate in an epidemic is calculated by dividing the number of deaths from a specific disease by the number of people diagnosed with that disease over a specific period of time.

In the United States right now, health officials have no way of knowing how many people actually have the disease, and thus no way of knowing the accurate fatality rate of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the subsequent COVID-19 disease.

Mills estimated about 20% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 show no symptoms of the disease.

Commissioner Chris Fillios was struck by the idea that people without any symptoms can have the same viral load, and be just as contagious, as people who have symptoms.

“We’re way behind on testing in the United States,” said Mills, who has spent the last 27 years studying and teaching preventive and emergency medicine.

Fillios asked him to present his epidemiological knowledge to BOCC and the head of each county department Monday.

“You as commissioners are going to be called to make decisions on a lack of data,” Mills said.

He then pulled up a slide showing the exponential growth of the virus in countries like Italy, compared to the moderate growth and eventual decline in countries like South Korea. Then Mills showed COVID-19 growth in the United States, its trajectory paralleling the early crises in Italy.

Dr. Trevor Bedford at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer research center in Seattle, specializes in infectious diseases.

“You really need to be able to identify people early on and have them isolate to stop the spread of the virus,” Bedford said.

Bedford said it is important to test as many individuals as possible.

All three commissioners shared concern with the lack of available tests within the county.

Bedford suggested that extensive testing would alleviate the shutdown of the American economy, sending workers who have tested negative back into the workforce instead of into forced isolation.

“The only treatment we have at this point are the containment measures we can take,” Mills said.

Mills said vaccines are not a realistic answer to the pandemic in the near future.

The coronavirus is an RNA virus, making it inherently unstable and mutable, he said.

“We are not going to have an effective vaccine for one to two years,” Mills said.

Scientists have discovered that 75% of all coronavirus-related deaths have occurred in patients with hypertension.

In Washington state, 100% of patients who died of COVID-19 developed acute respiratory distress syndrome within 72 hours of testing positive. Thirty-three percent developed cardiomyopathy. Sixty-seven percent of these patients died, while 24% have remained critically ill.

Scott Howard, a libertarian who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, advised the commissioners against passing increased regulations, instead incentivizing closures for local businesses.

Mills countered Howard’s suggestion.

“This isn’t panic talk; this is happening right now in Italy,” Mills said. “It’s not theoretical, 800 people are dying a day.”

Fillios said the government’s primary responsibility is for the health and safety of its citizens.

“We have to look out for the collective good,” he said.