Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado

When we met amid social distancing, it felt like starting our friendship from scratch

On March 25, I met a friend for a picnic near my home.   For about eight months, he and I had gradually become accustomed to spending more and more time together.  Before social distance began, we routinely spent 10-12 hours a week together, sharing meals, errands, conversations, and artistic projects, with the occasional evening date […]

Posted inCOVID, Health, News, Politics and Government

Coronavirus testing is lagging so much that some Colorado counties are asking citizens to self-report symptoms

They call it a citizen epidemiological project.  As COVID-19 testing across the state and nation focuses on the already ill or high-risk workers, a grassroots program from Eagle County is taking root across Colorado as more communities enlist citizens to self-report their symptoms. With real-time citizen reports aligning with lab-confirmed test results, local health officials […]

Posted inCOVID, Health, News, Politics and Government

Months ago, Colorado trained to prepare for a pandemic. But not one like the coronavirus.

In August, months before the first case of the new coronavirus was documented, some of Colorado’s top health officials gathered in a room at the state Department of Public Health and Environment to train for a pandemic. The hypothetical scenario: A highly infectious and lethal new virus had jumped from animals to humans in China […]

Posted inCOVID, Health, News

Colorado’s other pandemic: The 1918 flu and the lessons learned — or maybe not — for coronavirus

A run on surgical masks. No viable vaccine. Opportunists. Uncertainty. Fatalism. Fear.  These were just a few of the elements converging at the uncontrolled intersection of medical science, politics and human nature — not this week, but a century ago, when the flu pandemic of 1918 crept into Colorado, gathered deadly momentum and claimed thousands […]