As COVID-19 cases surge in Florida, so does the amount of misinformation about wearing masks and social distancing. It’s never been more important to clear up the confusion and debunk the harmful myths circulating via social media.
Emergency medicine physician and chief medical officer at South Miami Hospital, Yvonne Johnson, M.D. joins host, Dr. Jonathan Fialkow, with information you need to know to protect yourself and your loved ones.
We encourage you to share this podcast with your family, friends and co-workers.
For more information about COVID-19 please visit BaptistHealth-coronavirus.com
As COVID-19 cases surge in Florida, so does the amount of misinformation about wearing masks and social distancing. It’s never been more important to clear up the confusion and debunk the harmful myths circulating via social media.
Emergency medicine physician and chief medical officer at South Miami Hospital, Yvonne Johnson, M.D. joins host, Dr. Jonathan Fialkow, with information you need to know to protect yourself and your loved ones.
We encourage you to share this podcast with your family, friends and co-workers.
For more information about COVID-19 please visit BaptistHealth-coronavirus.com
Announcer:
At Baptist Health, South Florida. It's our mission to care for you when you're injured or sick, and help you stay healthy and fit. Welcome to the Baptist HealthTalk podcast, where our respected experts bring you timely practical health and wellness information to improve your family's quality of life. Forget the myths and misinformation. We've got the facts about wearing a mask on this episode of Baptist HealthTalk.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
Hello Baptist HealthTalk podcast listeners. This is your host Dr. Johnathan Fialkow, and I'd like to welcome you to another special edition of our show, bringing you the latest information about coronavirus. As COVID-19 cases surge in Florida, so is the amount of misinformation about wearing masks and social distancing. It's time to clear up the confusion and knowing the facts has never been more important. This is information you need to protect yourself and your loved ones. And we encourage you to share this podcast with family, friends, and coworkers. Joining me today is one of Baptist Health physicians on the front lines, Dr. Yvonne Johnson. She is an emergency physician and chief medical officer at South Miami hospital. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Thank you Dr. Fialkow it's a pleasure to be here to discuss this really important topic.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
Agreed. And I know as a physician leader within the system, you know and I know what's going on nationwide. We know what's going on with community. We know what's going on in our local hospitals. And again, sometimes it's best to try to get that information out there. Misinformation is almost as bad as no information. So let's start by level setting a little bit. What are we seeing right now in the Baptist Health facilities what's going on in the ERs in terms of the population of people coming in. Are there going to be changes going back compared to the early stages of the COVID pandemic?
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Well, unfortunately we really are starting to see a resurgence of the number of people coming into the emergency department with symptoms of COVID-19. We're seeing an increase in the number of patients that are sick enough to need to be admitted. So I think that a lot of the increase in the infection rate that we saw in the past couple of weeks, we're now seeing that response coming in patients that are sick. And sick enough to come to the emergency department and being admitted to the hospital.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
It does seem to be the trend. I think we had some control in April and May from the social distancing, from the stay at home and from the masks. And now were seeing this surge, this increased lives you're talking about, but what can people do about it in their own lives? And specifically, obviously, I'm leading towards masks. So let's talk about masks and what we know and what we don't know. First facial coverings so that you're not a contributor. If you have virus even if very symptomatic, letting other people get it from you. So you want your mouth and nose covered. Can you talk a little bit about the different kinds of masks, and are there any recommendations that if you are going to use a mask for preventive purposes to decrease the transmissibility. What is the mask content or makeup of the mass that we want the public to be using?
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Well, I think a lot of the recommendations are based on the fact that we really need the hospital workers to have the masks that are specific for preventing them from getting disease from someone else. The masks that we're really asking the public to wear are any kind of covering that can act as a barrier to prevent the droplets that normally we expel when we breathe, when we talk, when we yell, when we sing. Where we want them to have some kind of a barrier to prevent sharing those droplets with each other. And we know that when we talk those droplets can carry about six feet. So that's why the six feet message is out there that you want to stay at least six feet from somebody else, but that's an estimation really based on just talking. Because what we also know is if you're yelling, or if you're singing it can go much further than that.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Even 13, 15, 20 feet, depending upon the volume of the yelling or singing. So you really want to be safe. It's also very difficult when you're out in public to know that you're going to stay exactly six feet from someone. So wearing a mask or wearing some type of facial covering is going to prevent you from sharing those droplets when you're normally breathing, talking, yelling, whatever it is. And if we're all doing it, then we're able to protect each other from those things. And we know in the hospitals that it works because we're all masked in the hospital. And we're working with patients who we absolutely know have the virus, and we're not transmitting that to each other as we work. And in general, we're not getting the disease from our patients. So we know that this works. And this is a way that we can protect each other. We can help protect our community. We can still be able to go and shop, and protect those business owners so that everything doesn't have to close back down while we're seeing this resurgence in the viral transmission.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
I think you just brought up a couple of great points. First is, [inaudible 00:05:57] that we should differentiate between these N95 respirators, these incredibly hard to find masks that are tightly fit around the person's face that are used for those extreme exposures at the hospital versus the surgical masks that we're talking about for the community. So that's a great, that's a great differentiator, and a great point. We do want to make sure we have those masks that are really for treating the exposed patient, the positive patients for our healthcare workers. The other thing is, as you mentioned, it's the distance is increased in the spread, especially when you're shouting, which is also one of the reasons why we think the opening of the bars was specifically worse. Because not only do you have a lot of people who may be infected without masks, but they tend to yell because of the noise level.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
Also crowded environments are not just you're close to someone, but you're generally raising your voice and further expelling transmissible virus. So again, it explains some of the things that are going on when you mentioned we using masks for a long time in the medical environment, certain people push back about that. "Well, wearing a mask may make it hard for me to breathe." Or, "I have pneumonia." It can cause pneumonia. Can you give a little bit of insight and education regarding the dangers if any of wearing masks.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Well, we have, as you know, been wearing masks in the medical environment for decades. So when you come into the hospital, we have a procedure like a surgery. Sometimes those surgeries are three, four, five, eight hours long. And the surgeon is standing there in a mask. And I don't think any one of us who are having surgery would want that surgeon to take the mask off and expose a patient to their respiratory secretions. So that surgeon and everyone in that surgical environment, or the procedural environment is wearing a mask for long periods of time. And that has never been our experience that people were either unable to breathe, or they were at risk of developing pneumonia. We have years and decades of experience and data with wearing masks in the hospital environment, and that's not been our experience.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
So there's no reason to think that that would be the experience now among the general public who are being asked to wear some type of a face covering. Whether it's a mask or a cloth mask because the whole idea is to be able to prevent that respiratory exhalations that could be... And we know that a number of people in the community have asymptomatic disease or pre-symptomatic. And by that we mean that you have the disease before you notice that you have symptoms. And you could have been spreading that disease to others before you knew that you should be protecting them. So the way that we do that is to make sure that we're always wearing a mask when we're out in public, and around people who we don't normally live with so that we can all be protected.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
That's another great point that I think some people may benefit from understanding. First, as you said, the masks are to prevent particulate matter or droplets from going from you to someone else, from someone else to you. They don't prevent oxygen or inhalation or carbon dioxide exhalation. So they really don't affect your respiration at all. Even though people may have a sense of that psychologically, but your talking about the asymptomatic nature, you talked about the SARS epidemic 15 years ago plus. SARS was known to be very symptomatic in its early stages. But this disease is unique because as you said, people can feel well and have it, and then get sick later, but they'd given it to people or never even know they had it. So let's talk a little bit about, again, the concept of people, especially young people who can transmit it. Why is it particularly important that everyone wear masks, and specifically speak a little bit more towards that asymptomatic nature. What happens if people don't wear a mask and they're asymptomatic and they expose others who expose others? Can you speak to that a little bit more?
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Yeah. Well, the whole idea is that what masks do is to prevent that transmission from one person to the next person. If I give it to one person and then they expose themselves to two more people, and then those two people expose it to two more people, then you can see how this increases exponentially. But if I have it and I don't know it, and I'm wearing a mask and the person I'm talking to is wearing a mask and I don't expose them, then the disease stops there with me. So I may be sick, but if I don't transmit it, then that thread is broken right there. And that's what we're trying to do is to break all of these threads that can happen if we don't know that we have it and we're exposing others to it. The whole idea for me is that it's not about whether or not we totally shut down, or we're able to open.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
I feel like this community responded when we asked people to stay home. And we were really able to see the power that this community had in bending that curve and reducing the transmission. Now we do want to open up as a community and as an economy, but we still have to recognize that we have that power. And we have the power now for our behavior to be to wear a mask so that we can open up safely, we can have resources. And that our hospitals who not only need to take care of COVID patients, but we need to continue to take care of all of the other things that we were around to take care of in our community long before there was COVID. People are continuing to have strokes and heart attacks, and appendicitis, and broken hip and we need to take care of those things.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
We have people in our community who have been waiting to have some of their necessary surgeries. They weren't emergency surgeries, but there were still necessary surgeries. And they've been waiting a long time for us to be able to do that. We're trying to do those things now, but we're not going to be able to continue to do that if we don't, again, bend this curve and prevent this spread. So these are really important reasons why people need to exert their power to affect this disease. And wearing a mask is not giving up your right, wearing a mask is exerting your power over this illness.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
As you said, the goal is not to get rid of this. We're not going to be able to for some time, unless we have vaccines. But it's to make sure that if someone goes out, they're not giving it to someone and they can be comfortable that if they're exposed to someone else, they're not getting it. And I think that's where the masks and then the social distancing come in. I want to talk about social distancing in a second before, again, some of the myths or let's debunk a couple of things about the masks. Is there a difference? Can somebody use a cloth mask they make themselves, surgical masks, paper masks. Is there any benefit or risk of one over the other?
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Well, I think we definitely have more data on the surgical masks that are multiple layers in terms of being able to prevent the spread. But I have seen demonstrations of even just a simple cloth mask, where they've asked somebody to talk in front of a petri dish with a mask and without a mask. And there's definitely a difference in what grows on the petri dish with the mask and without. But it was very dramatic when they did a cloth mask, and no mask when you have someone cough. And even more dramatic with somebody sneezing because you can imagine. I think people are very aware of the production of those droplets.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
If somebody sneezes or coughs in your immediate area, and just having a cloth mask prevented that droplet from getting to the petri dish, and you can see dramatically the difference in the bacteria that grew on the dish. So while we don't have tremendous amounts of data about the cloth mask and how much it transmits, even if it reduces it only 50%. That's going to be a tremendous difference in how many people we have to take care of in a hospital setting. And what we're able to do as a community and as an economy to continue to be able to live at least in a new normal situation, and not have to go back into a lockdown situation.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
So again, another great point, the mask does not totally inhibit exploration of the virus, which brings the second component is the social distancing. We have learned that you could pass someone quickly and get exposed to a couple of droplets and maybe not get sick. It's the amount of virus. How long have you been exposed to the components. So let's talk a little bit about social distancing and related to masks.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
So if people go out of their house, if someone's at home by themselves, they don't need to wear a masks. That's not the goal it has to do with when you're around people. So if now we have our public and they're wearing masks, they're decreasing whatever percent of droplet exposure they might be contributing to others or other contributing to them. Let's talk about the social distancing component. Where would people really want to concentrate on social distancing or not. So, for example, if someone's going out to take a walk, which we want people to do during the pandemic. We want people to get out of that house, exercise, see the sun, should they wear a mask, should they wear a mask in certain conditions. Can you speak a little bit about recommendations towards getting out of the house and exercising with masks?
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
Yeah. Well, I think again, if you're not within six feet of someone or if you're out and about, especially outside. So one of the things that we do know is that transmission is much less outside. So if you're talking and you're either walking with the people you live with, or you're walking by yourself, you don't really need to wear a mask. What I would recommend is that you carry a mask with you in case you do have to be in a situation where you're in close proximity to others. But you don't need to exercise in the mask when you're in that situation. If you go out to a restaurant and the seating should be maintained, especially if it's an outdoor restaurant. The seating should be maintained where your little group, which presumably are going to be the people that you are in your little bubble at home with is separated by more than six feet from another group. Of course, you're going to have to take your mask off to eat.
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
But you need to have it there. So when you get up and you walk to the restroom and you're using the restroom, or if you are coming, excuse me, coming in and out, then you have your mask available to wear. Servers should always be in the mask as they're coming and approaching your table. So there are safer ways of doing things of interacting, of us going outdoors, absolutely is much better than indoors. And making sure that wherever you are your grouping is with is outside of that six foot perimeter.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
Again Yvonne, great points. I hope the listeners will take this to heart and use the masks. And encourage other people to use the masks it's a small safe thing to do to work towards controlling this pandemic until we have more definitive weapons in place. You've given us great information again from the safety of masks and the social distancing. Any final comment you'd like to make before we wrap up?
Dr. Yvonne Johnson:
I just want to emphasize the point that our community responded so impressively when we first were called to action in March. And we were asked to stay at home and social distance and lockdown. And it really was impactful for us in emergency departments, and in the hospital to be able to not be overwhelmed. And what we're asking now is that our community step up again, take control, take the power that we have to not spread this illness throughout our community. So that we can, again, support our frontline workers in the medical community, but we can also support our small business owners. We can support those people who need non-urgent procedures, and surgeries so that the hospitals can provide those. And that we can support our friends. And even those people we don't know who are at very high risk of a complicated illness and cannot get this disease. So I just call upon our community to exert that power that we have, where masks social distance be safe. And I believe we can get through this together.
Dr. Jonathan Fialkow:
Wonderful and thanks to you and your efforts as well. To our listeners, again, this is a Baptist HealthTalk as usual. We hope you find some valuable information here feel free to share. Please write to us with any thoughts ideas, request for topics in the future. Please write to us at baptisthealthtalk@baptisthealth.net. And once again stay safe and stay home. Thank you very much.
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