Don’t let coronavirus ‘run its course,’ Kansas health chief tells Sedgwick County
A Sedgwick County commissioner’s suggestion to let coronavirus run its course was promptly swatted down Wednesday by the state’s chief public health official, who called it “a really bad idea.”
The suggestion came during a commission meeting Wednesday morning focused on getting the county’s stalled economy back on track, by relaxing stay-at-home orders and allowing the reopening of thousands of businesses shuttered during the COVID-19 threat.
“We got an e-mail the other day about herd immunity,” Commissioner David Dennis said. “Maybe this idea is, let (COVID-19) see if it can run its course. I don’t know, I’m not an expert by any means.”
Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman sharply rejected Dennis’ suggestion Wednesday afternoon, saying that allowing coronavirus to run its course would nationally mean hundreds of thousands of deaths and possibly more than a million.
“I think it’s a really bad idea,” Norman said. “It would be a good idea if it were a minor illness that didn’t have a lot of deaths associated with it.”
The “more modern” approach is to mitigate the spread of the virus as much as possible, pushing cases into the future until after a vaccine is developed, he said.
The concept behind herd immunity is that once enough people in the community have been infected and survived, or acquired immunity by vaccination, a disease naturally recedes for lack of hosts.
According to the Johns Hopkins school of public health, generally 70% to 90% of a population needs to acquire immunity for herd immunity to take over and protect the others. State estimates are that about 30% of Kansans will be infected with coronavirus this year.
Dennis said the reason he brought up the idea was to get an opinion from the medical community, and having Norman’s opinion changes his mind.
“Honestly, I’ve gotten several emails that talked about (herd immunity),” Dennis said. “That’s one of the reasons I brought it up today when we were discussing possibly reopening.
And we have not had any input from the medical community . . . If Dr. Norman is against that idea, that’s news to me because I have not heard anything from the medical community on that.”
In the commission meeting, Dennis expressed frustration that he went to two big-box stores Saturday and they were so jammed he had a hard time parking much less going in and making a purchase.
He said only about one in 10 customers was wearing a face mask, yet he’s not seeing a major spike in COVID-19 cases.
And he said he’s worried about the fairness of telling small businesses they can’t be open while larger competitors are packed.
“We need experts to tell us, are we doing the right thing right now?” Dennis said. “Is the right thing to damage these small businesses and have other businesses thrive? Is the right thing that we’re doing, to say that we’re staying at home and yet people aren’t staying at home?”
Business advice in Sedgwick County, Wichita
Sedgwick County is turning to familiar names in the local business community for advice on relaxing emergency health rules and getting small business running again.
The county is planning a special meeting Friday to get input from leaders of the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce, Greater Wichita Partnership, Visit Wichita and other stakeholders in the business community.
“I’ve got the membership written down of who I’d like to invite,” Commission Chairman Pete Meitzner said at Wednesday’s meeting.
“Greater Wichita Partnership has convened a COVID-19 task force,” Meitzner said. “Tom (County Manager Tom Stolz) and I were on a Zoom call with them all yesterday. Tom and I have been invited to meet with the executive committee of the Chamber . . . tomorrow, to share what we know and hear their feedback.”
He said he also wants to involve Susie Santo, CEO of Visit Wichita, the city’s convention and visitors bureau.
Two orders by Gov. Laura Kelly, one banning gatherings of more than 10 people and another ordering the shutdown of businesses deemed non-essential to survival, are both set to expire by May 3 unless Kelly extends them.
Consensus among commissioners is that by then, the shutdowns will have gone on long enough.
Commissioner Jim Howell pushed for a sooner-rather-than-later approach to deciding how the county will reopen.
Like Dennis, Howell said he went to a big-box store over the weekend.
“One of the challenges we have right now is a lot of businesses are closed, (so) people are going to go to the one place that’s open,” he said. “So in some ways that well-intentioned (stay-at-home) order actually is probably making that worse. So if you really want to limit or reduce the number of people at the big-box store, maybe provide some competition out there in the community.”
Commissioner Michael O’Donnell agreed that the orders are causing harm.
“People are very restless, people are getting very concerned about the economic situation in Sedgwick County,” O’Donnell said. “We’ve all seen the reports about domestic violence and violent crime going up dramatically. And that’s direct causation from the stay-at-home order. People are losing their lives, unfortunately, because of this.”
O’Donnell and Dennis said they support forming a reopening task force to guide the commission, similar to what Johnson County has done.
“One of the things I’ve been thinking about is we need to involve the Chamber, somehow,” Dennis said. “They represent the businesses and they’re on the front lines and know what they need to do in order to be able to open.”
After the Friday meeting with business leaders, Meitzner suggested that the commission hold a special meeting on Monday.
That would give business owners some signals on what the county’s planning when Kelly’s orders expire, allowing businesses at least a week to call back laid-off and furloughed employees and gear up for reopening, he said.
The only partially dissenting voice on the commission was Lacey Cruse, who proposed expanding the circle of voices beyond the usual business interests.
“I really want to hear from everybody,” Cruse said. “I don’t want to be in a bubble . . . If we don’t allow ourselves to get out of our circles, we’re going to hear the same kinds of things from the people that we surround ourselves with.”
Cruse said that before the pandemic hit, the city and county were conducting multiple meetings to gather input on whether to tear down Century II and replace it with new convention and performing arts facilities.
“I think if we’re going to take the public’s opinion on erecting a building, then why wouldn’t we take the public’s opinion for the public health of our community to ensure the safety of everyone?” she said. “I think it’s important that we try to reach as many people as possible when making this decision.”
Meitzner said if you broaden the circle too far, it could end up like Tuesday’s Wichita City Council meeting, where an effort to allow live public comment on YouTube degenerated into an unruly online brawl with various commenters arguing with the council and each other, derailing the meeting.
“As we saw yesterday at the City Council meeting, when you just open it up . . .” Meitzner said, not finishing the sentence. “I don’t know the level of confidence I would have in the John Does that I don’t know personally.”
To let the general public weigh in, “We could set up a poll or something,” Meitzner said.
But for the special meeting, “What I’m talking about is the key people that run these operations: nonprofits, churches, businesses.”
A phased approach in the county
Earlier in the meeting, Health Director Adrienne Byrne laid out a phased approach to reopening businesses.
She said the four largest counties, Sedgwick, Johnson, Wyandotte and Shawnee, have been coordinating their reopening plans with Kelly and Norman.
“There may be differences in dates within any of the phases, but the goal is a similar structure,” Byrne said.
Byrne said the reopening will be gradual and the orders and limitations shouldn’t be completely lifted until a vaccine is developed, which is estimated to take a year to 18 months.
The following are the phases Byrne suggested:
▪ Phase One — This is the phase Sedgwick County is in now and includes a stay-at-home order, non-essential businesses closed, and public gatherings limited to 10 or fewer people.
Before Sedgwick County loosens its restrictions, it would have to hit several benchmarks, Byrne suggested.
First, the county would need to increase testing so it can actually measure the spread of the disease at the local level.
“Kansas is near the bottom for available testing out of the country,” Byrne said. “And because we haven’t been able to adequately test, we can’t really have confidence in what are numbers are or are not telling us”
“We don’t have adequate testing supplies,” she said. “They’re slowly starting to trickle in, more than ever before, still not near what we need, but they are starting to come in and so we’re feeling definitely more hopeful about that activity.”
After testing increases, the number people infected with the coronavirus in Sedgwick County would have to decrease over a 14-day period.
Personal protective equipment and hospital capacity must also be adequate to move on to the next phase.
▪ Phase Two — Restrictions on businesses would be lifted while measures would be taken to reduce exposure to the elderly and vulnerable populations.
What restrictions would be lifted and what measures would be taken to protected vulnerable populations have not been decided.
Criteria for moving to the next phase would be the same as other phases, and the county could move back one phase at any time.
“The threshold for returning to the previous phase will be a sustained rise in cases over a five-day period,” Byrne said.
“If we need to move back to the previous stage to protect our community, then we’ll move back to the previous stage,” Byrne said.
▪ Phase Three — Most restrictions would be lifted in this phase. But some would continue, including a limit on gathering sizes.
“We expect that spread is going to continue to occur during those phases, may even continue to have some outbreaks during those phases,” Byrne said.
“Physical distancing or social distancing will continue with limited gathering sizes,” Byrne said. “And we’ve all been used to the the social distancing. I think when we think about physical distancing, it creates a different picture in our mind.”
▪ Phase Four — All coronavirus-related restrictions would be lifted. The county should move into this phase only after a vaccine is developed and distributed, Byrne said.
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
