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Volume XXXV, Number 35
Coronavirus
Established 1985 – Locally owned & independent
Preparing for COVID-19
By Michael Howell
An electron microscope image of 2019-nCoV (yellow), the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab. Credit: NIAID-RML.
Coronavirus outbreak declared state and national emergency
By Michael Howell
On Friday, President Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency. That action will free up close to $42.5 billion in federal funds to use in addressing the crisis. After being exposed to several people who have since tested positive for the coronavirus COVID-19, the President has also been tested and gotten a negative report. Montana Senator Steve Daines has been leading the efforts in Congress to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. He presented his proposal and ideas to the President two weeks ago.
Last Thursday, he introduced bipartisan legislation to provide disaster unemployment assistance to people who are unable to work due to the current coronavirus outbreak. Assistance would be available to individuals, including self-employed individuals and independent contractors, who are sick, quarantined, furloughed, or whose family circumstances keep them from working or reduce their pay as a result of the coronavirus outbreak or government containment efforts. Daines also urged Trump to take swift action to make testing for the coronavirus affordable. The IRS announced the next day
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
it would adopt Daines’ proposal to remove financial barriers to testing and treatment for the coronavirus by allowing high deductible health plans to cover coronavirus-related testing and treatment before a patient has met their deductible. He unveiled a slate of proposals and priorities he’s working to advance that will help protect Montana families and their finances during the coronavirus outbreak including paid leave, temporarily waiving payroll taxes, providing relief from tariffs, and ensuring access to affordable testing.
See EMERGENCY, page 3
On Saturday, March 14, Montana finally joined the rest of the nation as the first reports were issued of people testing positive for COVID-19, the coronavirus that is sweeping through the United States at an alarming pace. That it would arrive here was inevitable, according to the scientists at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The big question is, “Are we prepared?” Actively preparing for the arrival of such a highly contagious and rapidly spreading infection before it arrives, it turns out, is one of the best things a community can do. If you can’t prevent the influx of the infection, then you do what you can to mitigate the impacts when it does arrive. It is something like nailing plywood sheets across the windows of your house in preparation for a hurricane. It feels a bit foolish to be boarding up your house on a bright, calm sunny day, but it is being done to prepare for the worst. What’s coming is not exactly like a hurricane, but there is reason to be especially concerned with this “flu-like” virus because it is not a flu virus, it is a coronavirus. And a “novel” form of coronavirus at that, brand new to humans. Another novelty is the extremely high infection rate, high death rate and high rate of spread. The World Health Organization has recognized it as a pandemic. The most lethal pandemic to hit the United States was the 1918 Spanish flu. The CDC estimates that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with that virus. The number of deaths was
estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. The Institute for Disease Modeling at CDC calculated that the new coronavirus is roughly equally transmissible as the 1918 flu, and just slightly less clinically severe, and it is higher in both transmissibility and severity compared with all other flu viruses in the past century. The CDC has also modelled a worst case scenario if no interventions and no acts of mediation at all are taken, that 160 million to 214 million people in the U.S. could be infected. The projections suggest that 2.4 million to 21 million people in the U.S. could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds, in an outbreak that could last months or even over a year. But, according to Lauren Gardner, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering who models epidemics, when people change their behavior those model parameters are no longer applicable, so shortterm forecasts are likely to be more accurate. “There is a lot of room for improvement if we act appropriately,” said Gardner. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking at a congressional hearing last Thursday, said that what will determine the ultimate death count “will be how you respond to it with containment and mitigation.” Some things that could serve to flatten the infection rate curve include increased testing, trac-
ing contacts of infected people, and limiting social interactions by banning large gatherings and encouraging people to stay home and take simple precautions such as frequently washing your hands and not touching your face. The funds needed to help local communities in the United States prepare for and endure this massive pandemic were freed up Friday when President Trump declared the outbreak to be a national emergency. Dr. Fauci said that Mr. Trump’s declaration of a national emergency had cleared the way for a concerted, effective response to the virus. “Now it’s all systems go,” he said, adding that “as we get knowledge about new testing, we’ll alleviate the anxiety that we have in the world about, we don’t know what’s going on, but also it will give the individual physician and individual citizen the opportunity to know where they stand.” All levels of government are trying to form a unified voice and unified approach to try and slow the outbreak down and try and keep medical facilities from being overwhelmed. The top orchestrator of the effort is the Centers for Disease Control and that is probably the best source for people to look for information on how the disease is progressing and what steps they can take to mitigate the impacts. https://www.cdc.gov/ coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html https://dphhs.mt.gov/publichealth/cdepi/diseases/coronavirusmt Local efforts to address the coming crisis are concentrated in the Ravalli County Health See PREPARING, page 3
Credit: Vox
Source: CDC
This graph shows the importance of using protective measures to slow the outbreak so that the health care system can adequately deal with the pandemic. “Flatten the curve” has become a rallying cry to remind people to wash hands often, cover sneezes and coughs, practice social distancing, and stay home when sick.
Resolution to suspend Stevi council member withdrawn By Michael Howell
At the March 12 Stevensville Town Council meeting, the agenda item considering the suspension of Council President Bob Michalson was withdrawn from the record at the request of Council member Dempsey Vick who, along with Council member Jaime Devlin had it placed on the agenda for consideration. Vick said that it was a mistake to seek the suspension because the council should begin dealing with these kinds of issues at the lowest possible level. As a secondary motion Vick moved to consider how to handle the issue of addressing complaints about a council member from other council members or staff at the next Committee of the Whole
meeting. “We need to hammer out a process by which we can deal with grievances amongst one another,” said Vick. Council member Devlin said that she had heard a lot of troubling comments about Michalson’s behavior but was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt until she received a text message from him that day. “If our staff is treated like I was today, at best I don’t feel like you have any right to be sitting at this table,” said Devlin. She said it was their duty under the personnel policy to make sure that staff and department heads don’t have to work in a hostile work environment. “Do you even know the
rules and duties of a councilman?” asked Michalson. “Do you know the process that put us here?” He said he has not been shown any documentation or evidence about the allegations against him. He stated that he thought the process wasn’t being followed and stated that it didn’t happen this time because the Mayor actually wrote the resolution to suspend him. Mayor Brandon Dewey stated that the meeting was not a trial and it was not the venue to elaborate on the details of allegations or to defend against them. He said the motion on the floor was to consider establishing a grievance process at the next Committee of the Whole meeting. “You need a fair shake,” Dewey said to Michalson. The
motions to withdraw the suspension agenda item and to place the issue of the grievance procedure on the agenda of the next COW meeting were approved on votes of 3-1 with Councilor Devlin dissenting in both cases. Mayor Dewey stated that the current grievance procedure allows for employees to file a grievance against their department head and it would be taken to the Mayor, but the behavior of an elected official is not addressed in the policy. “My office has no disciplinary authority over the council,” said Dewey. He said there is no process described in the policy for a council person to resolve a grievance against another council person or for an employee to
make a grievance against a council person. The next COW meeting, which had been scheduled for March 19, has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 state of emergency. A second controversial issue tackled by the Council was the issue of a service agreement with the IT company First Call, which Mayor Dewey signed on December 12, 2019 without Council permission and without placing it out for bid. Town Attorney Scott Owens gave a preliminary opinion based on the facts that were available but without having researched it completely, stating “There has been See STEVI, page 2
Correction
In last week’s story about the Stevensville Town Council agenda item considering suspension of Council President Bob Michalson, it was incorrectly reported that: “Town Finance Officer Robert Underwood said that he felt threatened when Michalson told him that he could make things very hard on him if he refused to do what Michalson was asking.” The threat was not made by Mr. Michalson, but by a member of the public. The Bitterroot Star apologizes for the error.