Gossip, Guns, & Godawful Vaccine Uptake Rates

Three Things Thursday

Feb 16, 2024

Three Things Thursday highlights three things I am paying attention to as an epidemiologist each week. This week was highlighted by two major events/holidays in the US — Valentine’s Day (do you know what it means to have a healthy heart?) and the Super Bowl. While I had very little interest in who won the game and was unimpressed with most of the commercials (Usher on rollar skates was pretty awesome, though), the Super Bowl is the perfect time to remember my public health is America’s football team metaphor…

Football teams need a good quarterback. Without a good quarterback, teams lose.

BUT the rest of the team does the punishing, necessary, and often unrecognized work to ensure that their team is successful.

And so it is with public health and medicine.

Our healthcare providers — doctors, nurses, therapists, PAs — are the quarterbacks of our health football team. They run the plays that make us healthy as individuals — they prescribe medicines, perform surgeries, help us develop healthy habits and quit unhealthy ones, monitor our health status, and read the results from test results.

We NEED good healthcare providers. We rely on them. They diagnose us, medicate us, care for us, and ensure that we have the care we need to stay alive. Healthcare providers are the quarterback of our healthcare system.

HOWEVER, there are 21 other players on a football field who help run, carry, steal (what my daughter calls an interception), block, and move the ball up and down that football field. The quarterback calls the individual plays and sets up the team to win, but those 21 other players are doing the punishing, necessary, and often unrecognized work to create healthy communities.

Public health is the other players on our health (football) team.

Don’t forget the work of public health.

And don’t skip over these three things each week. This is the important news you need to know.

Hoping this post helps to educate and empower you
to be healthy and create healthy communities.

Gossip — word on the street is…

The CDC policy regarding isolation after being diagnosed with COVID-19 has not changed since December 2021. According to current CDC guidelines, if you test positive for COVID, you should stay home and isolate from other individuals for at least five days.

Rumor has it — according to anonymous CDC sources who are speaking with the Washington Post — that the CDC is planning to announce new isolation guidelines sometime this spring. Supposedly, the new CDC recommendations will state that individuals can leave isolation when their symptoms are mild or improving AND they have been fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours.

California and Oregon have already made these changes at the state level, bringing their COVID guidelines in line with flu and common cold recommendations.

On Tuesday, I spoke on the news about these rumors and the need for the CDC to update its guidelines. You can watch it here —

The updates from the CDC are needed.

We’re living in a world where — people get sick but cannot afford or have no need to test to determine which virus is making them sick. Individuals need to know how long they should stay home to stop the spread of disease before returning to work or school.

We’re living in a world where — we need harm reduction strategies that decrease disease spread AND are easy to understand and acceptable to (as in the guidance will be followed by) most people. It is better to have everyone stay home for 24 hours post-fever than to demand an extra five days, which will be ignored by the majority of people who cannot afford to miss five additional days of work or school or who think five days is just ridiculously long, especially if they are not feeling ill.

We’re living in a world where — we must prioritize prevention (not getting sick in the first place). We need to continue to promote vaccines, hand-washing, increased & improved ventilation, sneeze/cough hygiene, masking when case counts are high, providing sick leave to all employees, and a culture that supports individuals staying home when they do in fact get sick.

The rumors we are hearing are that official CDC guidelines will change sometime this spring. Stay tuned…

Guns

Yesterday as the parade and celebration honoring the Kansas City Chiefs was wrapping up, gunshots were heard throughout the crowd.

At this point, we know that one person has died and at least 30 others have been injured, including 11 children. Supposedly, the shooting was the result of a personal dispute and not an attack on the celebration.

Regardless of the reason behind the shooting — this is the 49th mass shooting in the United States in 2024. Eighty-nine people have been killed in mass shootings this year (including the one yesterday) and 172 people have been injured.

We need to prevent gun violence before it occurs.

We need to support organizations that are working to reduce injuries and deaths from gun violence (again, it is time to lift up and support the work of Everytown for Gun Safety and the JHU Center for Gun Violence Prevention & Policy, among others).

We need to advocate for policy & changes to reduce deaths and injuries from guns.

And to those who are tempted to scream, “But the Constitution guarantees my right to bear arms,” please read on…

This is about reducing deaths and injuries from gun violence.

This is NOT about the guns. This is about prevention. This is about human lives.

To better understand what I am talking about, let’s talk about car crashes (there is so much to learn about public health from car crashes)… Since the 1970s the number of car crashes has decreased by 70% and the number of deaths from car crashes has steadily declined. And we have NOT taken away the cars. Instead, we make safer cars, we require everyone in a car to wear a seatbelt, we require new drivers to take a test and train with a licensed driver (for months), we restrict when young/new drivers can be on the roads (home by 10 pm), we require car seats for babies, we teach new parents how to install car seats properly, and we have laws to prevent people from driving drunk or texting while driving.

A public health approach to preventing gun violence means we put policies and programs in place to reduce injuries and deaths caused by gun violence.

This is NOT about the guns. This is about background checks, education, making guns safer, and more.

This is about preventing gun violence.

HPV Vaccine Rates are Low, Low, Low

Yesterday, the CDC released data showing that in 2022 only 38.6% of kids aged 9-17 have received one dose (of two needed) of the HPV vaccine.

Before going any further, I need to pause and state the obvious —

The HPV vaccine PREVENTS CANCER.

There is a lot of stigma surrounding the HPV vaccine. And yes, HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. But it is an easily transmitted disease — one that can be passed through skin-to-skin contact. And it is really common. Really common — more than 90 percent of sexually active men and 80 percent of sexually active women will be infected with HPV in their lifetime.

So we have a highly contagious virus. This virus is pervasive in our communities.

And we know this virus causes cancer.

But we have a vaccine that prevents the cancers caused by HPV.

Get vaccinated.

Get your children and grandchildren vaccinated.

The percentage of children vaccinated needs to go through the roof!

Tell them this is a vaccine that prevents cancer because (in fact) the HPV vaccine prevents cancer. The vaccine helps the immune system to clear multiple strains of the HPVirus and prevents cancer from developing.

That’s amazing. Get vaccinated.

Questions about the COVID isolation guidelines? thoughts on what we can do to prevent gun violence? questions about the HPV vaccine? Please ask. There are no stupid questions. If you are unsure, ask questions.

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