Local preparedness for COVID 19

by Kathleen Sloan | March 9, 2020
4 min read
​The New Mexico Department of Health, as of March 9, confirms there are still no cases of COVID 19 in the state. 

COVID 19, a strain of coronavirus—which has been around for decades—is a more virulent or dangerous strain discovered in 2019. 

Sierra Vista Hospital is diligently monitoring COVID 19 on an international, national and state level.

“We are tracking the epidemiology of COVID 19 closely,” Chief Nursing Officer Tom Ismond, said, who, along with Infection Control Nurse Patrick Congjuico are overseeing protocols and preparedness at the hospital. 

“We meet two and sometimes three times a week,” Ismond said, “to cover our readiness in the event there is a community outbreak.” 

Although testing and test-kit shortages have been reported as contributing to the spread of infection in some areas of the United States, it is not a problem in New Mexico. 

According to New Mexico Department of Health Public Information Officer David Morgan there are 1,500 kits in the state, “with more expected to arrive soon.”  

Ismond said Sierra Vista Hospital has tested no one for COVID 19 so far, and if it does, it would swab the person here and “send it by special courier—there is a special process,” to the NMDOH’s Scientific Lab.  . 
Morgan confirmed all tests are being done at the state level. “Right now only our Scientific Labs [in Santa Fe] are conducting the tests, and the number of tests is not close to exceeding inventory at end-of-day yesterday, March 8,” Morgan said. 

“So far, 57 people have been tested in NM, all with negative results,” Morgan said. “We are working with other labs in the state to coordinate with them as to offering the COVID-19 tests at select locations statewide.”

“If someone tests positive in New Mexico,” Morgan said, “the NMDOH will already know about it because only the Scientific Laboratory Division is testing currently. However, the patient’s provider should call 505-827-0006 to coordinate with the NMDOH Epidemiology and Response Division for follow-up instructions, which will depend on how ill the patient is.” 

 At Sierra Vista Hospital, Ismond said, “We would first test the person for the flu before initiating the COVID 19 test. We don’t want to get in panic mode and over-respond. We have supplies and we have access. If there were a huge run on those things that would be a problem.” 

Locally, Ismond said, “There is no evidence of panic.” He has relatives in Washington State, he said, where there is the highest number of cases. “The reaction has been very different than here.” 

“If everybody did what they are supposed to do, I don’t believe there would be an outbreak in the United States,” Ismond said. Congjuico agreed. 

Wash your hands. Don’t touch your nose, eyes or mouth. Eat right, sleep right and do your best to stay healthy. Avoid crowded areas. If you get sick, stay home. Take your temperature twice a day, and if you develop a fever, call your healthcare provider, Ismond and Congjuico said. 

“If you feel you might have the virus, COVID 19, call us first,” Ismond said, “at (575) 743-1340, so we can minimize your contact with others or we can go see you at home.” 

It appears the virus is spread through droplets from coughing and sneezing, Ismond said, but “particulates could stay in the air,” and therefore the hospital is prepared to fight it as if it were an airborne infection. 

Depending on the severity of a person’s symptoms, keeping them home may be the best way to contain the virus, Ismond said. 

“In this country we can go home and separate ourselves from our more susceptible older relatives,” Ismond said. “We can use sanitary practices, because that’s how we live.” 

If the person has severe respiratory symptoms, however, and tests positive for COVID 19, the hospital would place them in its “negative-pressure room,” Ismond said. There are no vents and the air is pumped through “special scrubbers.” 

If more than one patient needs to be hospitalized, they would be transferred to another facility with more negative-pressure rooms. 

Ismond and Congjuico compared the COVID 19 to the flu and were as concerned about the flu. 

“There is no hard evidence it is more virulent than the flu,” Ismond said, with Congjuico agreeing. There were 37 million cases of flu and 180 deaths over the last six months in the U.S.

“More people don’t contract flu because we have a vaccine,” Ismond said. A vaccine for COVID 19 is said to be a year or two away. 

The 3.4 percent death rate for COVID 19  world wide “is steep now,” Ismond said, “but it’s a sine-wave thing. It will gentle out.” The cruise ships and some countries crowding infected people together created a “petri dish” effect that have made the numbers high, he said. 

The flu has a .5 percent death rate, “which has had extensive testing over decades and millions of cases,” Ismond said. 

The six-month flu season is just about to end, Congjuico said. “The number of flu cases was higher last year,” he said, which was a rather bad year, making this year just shy of a bad flu season.  

Ben Archer Health Clinics did not return a request for information by press time. 

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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