March 20, 2020 • 21 mins
Dr. Vanessa Raabe, an infectious disease specialist at New York City’s NYU Langone Health, puts a women’s lens on staying healthy during the coronavirus crisis, and provides practical tips and tactics.
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hi. This is Malan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
During this difficult time, we want to bring you special
episodes featuring conversations with women and men who are using
(00:40):
their power for purpose. We'll bring you leaders and experts
from the front lines of the coronavirus who will share tips, tactics,
and inspiration on how to manage in this very difficult
and frankly uncertain time. Our first guest is Dr Vanessa Rabba,
an infectious disease specialist from n y U Landown Health
in New York City. Dr Rabba, thanks so much for
(01:00):
joining us. Thank you for having me so first for
our listeners. What do we know at this point about
coronavirus in the US, in particular, how fast is it
actually growing? So I think this is a really good question.
And certainly we're diagnosing more cases as testing becomes more available,
but we still aren't testing most people, and we don't
(01:21):
know how many cases are actually up there and even
how many people have already had this and already gone
through what might be a very mild illness. So we
don't truly know the number of people in the United
States that have been infected right now, and we probably
won't know until this is all over, because while that
information is very important right now, testing means having people
(01:45):
come out of their home, and we don't want people
who are having symptoms who are potentially infectious, whether with
COVID nineteen or with flu or other viruses that cause
the coal. We want them to stay at home regardless,
and that risk of spreading to other people right now
isn't worth the benefit of having that extra testing information.
(02:07):
So you said something interesting in there, that people might
have it and have just very mild symptoms and not
even know what are the super mild symptoms people might
be having. So mild symptoms might just include it, a
little bit of a cost, a little bit feeling more
tire than usual, um, some mild fevers but nothing too high,
and sometimes a mild headache. Okay, got it, got it?
(02:27):
And and and is there anything that you can do
to understand if it's just a mild symptoms of COVID
or if it's just a regular run of the mill cold.
So overall, we're seeing clothes usually having more symptoms like
a runny nose and sore throats than we are with COVID.
But there are some cases in COVID there are small
percentage to them where they do have those symptoms. So
(02:48):
it's not possible based on symptoms alone to fully differentiate
whether you have COVID nineteen or whether you have another
infection like a cold or flu. Well, that's leads you
to next question, which is a lot of states are
telling folks to practice social distancing and in some cases quarantine.
Why does this work and who needs to be doing this?
(03:10):
So the reason that we're saying that is because the
way this virus seems to be transmitted, so we know
that it's spread by have large droplets in the air.
And these are droplets that we make when we speak,
when we cough, when we sneeze, and they don't stay
in the air very long. They fall to the ground
pretty quickly, but these can travel up to six feet,
which is where that if you're hearing six feet, it's
(03:31):
kind of a social distancing measure. That's where that comes from.
But because all those particles then go and land on
whatever surfaces there. If you touch that surface while the
viruses still there and get it on your hands, you
can potentially infect yourself if you touch your nose, your mouth,
or your eyes, which is why a lot of people
are saying, try to avoid touching your face if possible.
(03:52):
And so that social distancing that we're doing is trying
to get that little bit more spread in between people
so that we do have as much transmission in those
respiratory droplets because they can't travel very far. And also
the quarantine or the idea of kind of socially distancing
of not only physically, but just decreasing the amount of
(04:14):
contact with people you have. And this means different things
for different people. For some people, kind of this quarantine
isolation means staying at home and not having contact with anyone,
especially for people who might be at high risk if
they get COVID nineteen of getting severe disease, so people
who are elderly or people who have underlying medical conditions.
(04:36):
But that might also be just cutting back on the
number of people that you are seeing. So the other
thing that's important to keep in mind is we are
doing all of this to try to protect our physical health,
but we also need to make sure that we're taking
care of our mental health and our emotional health throughout
this whole process, and humans need other human interactions. And
(04:57):
although we do have some great things now with the
left tromics of ways that you can be physically separated
and still connected, we need to make sure that as
we are doing this isolation, that we are not causing
ourselves to be mentally and emotionally isolated from everybody else.
And that's such an important point that I think people
are starting to maybe feel actually, um, we also hear
(05:19):
not people are being asked to shelter in place. What
do you think about that? So, I think right now,
as I mentioned, we don't know the total number of
people out there who have this, and most people who
get this infection are going to have mild symptoms. Of
people who get it have mild to moderate symptoms that
will be kind of similar to what you feel when
(05:39):
you have a colder or flu, but you're able to
stay at home and just take medications to help manage
those symptoms. But or SO can get more sick from
this and can be sick enough that they either need
to be in the hospital or can sometimes need intensive care,
and those are people who don't have as much medical reserves.
(06:00):
So if you have a medical condition where your body
is kind of struggling to deal with that, and then
you put an infection on top of it, it means
you don't have that much reserve to help deal and
fight with this infection and fight it off um And
as we get older, our immune systems don't kind of
weakend over time, so we don't have as strong defenses
(06:20):
to help fight off these infections. And so what we
are trying to do with all of the social distancing
is not necessarily coming out of fear, although there is
quite a bit of fear that comes with a new virus.
But we're doing it because we want to try to
protect the people who are at high risk for getting
severe disease. We want to help protect our loved ones,
(06:41):
our family members, are friends, our neighbors, the people we
know who are more prone to getting sick from this,
and I think we all know those people. And this
is asking everybody to kind of step up and take
care of each other so that we can protect each other.
So a lot of this comes out out of necessarily fear,
but of how are we going to protect our fellow
(07:02):
human being? And is there a way to increase immunity
to this virus? I mean, is there anything that we
could be doing right now that would be helping us
in this moment before we have a vaccine, so we
don't have anything that will increase our immunity specifically to
this virus. If you do have medical conditions at baseline,
and you maybe haven't been keeping them in good checks
(07:23):
as you should, this is the time to try to
get those under a little bit more control, maybe pay
a little bit more attention, because if we can get
you that little bit of extra reserve where your body
can deal with the stress of infection better, that might
make the difference between having an illness where you can
stay at home or an illness that might cause you
to need to land in the hospital. Interesting, this is
(07:45):
a very important time time to be taking care of
your health. I think hopefully everyone is going to be
hearing this is going to be focused on that. I
know there's a lot going into this right now, is
in and the understanding is evolving. But are there scientists
who you feel are making breakthroughs? Any thing that makes
you hopeful as a clinician. So I think we have
a lot of people working on this internationally and doing
(08:06):
good science does take time to make sure it's done right,
but we are seeing hopefully coming down the line in
the future more diagnostic tests and more different diagnostic tests
that maybe can tell us not only if the virus
is there right now, which is what our current test
is able to do, but can tell us if you've
had the virus in the past, so if you've already
(08:28):
had it and cleared it. And we are seeing a
lot more scientists who are starting to do testing for
different medications that are already out there that we can
know their safety record, their track record for other diseases,
to say do they have effect for the virus that
causes COVID nineteen. And I think that's really important because
we need to understand how the best to use the
(08:50):
resources we already have, in addition to trying to develop
new things like vaccines to help prevent against this. We'll
be back after this break. Now, let me ask you
about men versus women, because we're seeing some interesting statistics
(09:12):
pop up. Does this virus treat women differently than men?
So if you look at different studies that have come
out of China varies depending what you read from study
to study. Overall, I think probably not based on gender alans.
There are some differences in China with things like rights
of smoking. So if you think about you know, do
(09:32):
you have really good lung function or your lungs a
little bit down from what they could be at baseline,
that might make a difference. But overall, I think as
a trend, we're seeing men and women getting justice sick
from this um. Again, most of those people are not
very sick, but for the people who are getting more
severely sick, we're not necessarily seeing a big difference in gender.
(09:54):
So um. You know, the one place that we do
see a difference in gender often is in caregiving. And
we know that women and often carry the double burden
in times like these taking care of themselves and also
taking care of their families and children and elderly. Can
we talk a little bit about mothers. What advice do
you have for moms who are taking care of their
kids right now? Are kids in at risk group? So
we know that kids can get infected with asprus just
(10:17):
like everybody else, but fortunately kids seem to be doing
much better with it. So even if they get the infection,
we're seeing very few kids getting severely ill, a lot
less than an adult. So for some reasons, kids seem
a little bit more resilient with this infection. So if
your chilm gets it, the chances are based on what
we know right now, that it's going to be a
(10:37):
pretty mild illness. And obviously on the other side of
the spectrum are are the elderly and older relatives. What
are you seeing there? How are women dealing with the
caretaking responsibilities given the fact that we're trying to isolate
people so that they don't they don't have exposure, And this,
I think is a very good question. And you know,
if we have care taking responsibilities, we can't all of
(10:58):
give those up completely. We don't always have good backup
systems for that. And now it's the time to start
thinking about what would you do if you were to
get sick. So, if you are healthy and you are
giving care to somebody, you can continue to do that,
and you should practice, you know, good social distancing, both
for yourself to minimize the chance you're going to get
(11:19):
sick and spread it to other people, but also for
the person who you're giving care to, but if you
are truly sick, it's time to kind of back down.
We don't want to be exposing people who are more
vulnerable to this infection to the disease, and that's something
that can be really difficult to do because a lot
of us don't have good backup systems. And so I
(11:40):
think moving forward, one thing that's really important to think
about your social network. Think about who can you call
on if you were to get sick, who would be
able to help take care of, you know, an elderly
family member, or even if you were sick and UM
needed to go to the hospital, who could take care
of your children while you're gone, And reaching out to
them and have in that discussion of how are we
(12:02):
going to get through this together? What happens if you
get sick, what happens if I get sick? That's such
an important point in this moment. It feels like community
is is taking on this other level um that we
maybe haven't seen as much in the US in recent years.
And so I feel like everyone's reaching out and and
trying to stay connected closely, which is so important in
this moment. As you said, both for for physical health,
(12:22):
but also for mental health reasons. You know, one group
of women that we haven't spoken about a pregnant women.
Is there anything specific that pregnant women should be doing.
So the good news is what we're seeing so far
and pregnant women is that we're not saying them get
any sicker than the rest of the adults. In some
some case series, and there are only a small amount
of reports and pregnant women out there, so this is limited.
(12:45):
In some case series, we saw less severe cases in
pregnant women compared to otherwise healthy adults. So if you
are pregnant, there's nothing specifically that you have to do differently.
You should still be doing good hand hygiene, trying to
avoid touching your space, doing that social distancing, and trying
to stay away from six people because even if they
(13:06):
don't have COVID nineteen, they could still have something like
a flu, which we know can be more severe and
pregnant women. But we're seeing so far and women even
who have COVID nineteen, that third trimester of pregnancies is
not a lot of that seems to be passed to
the infant. So even if you have COVID nineteen and
your child is born. We aren't seeing a lot of
(13:29):
those babies having COVID nineteen at the time that they're born,
and a lot of times those children have been doing well.
And this only comes from limited numbers um that have
been published so far that we know about. But it's
a very reassuring then, and that's great to hear. That
is good news. Um. You know, I just keep thinking
about all this precautions that we should be taking, and
(13:51):
everyone is so I hope, being abundantly cautious. I mean,
how do you differentiate between sort of run of the
mill allergies and you know, I think everyone's trying to
feel like a little bit of fear setting in that
I'm sick, I have COVID, I can't talk to anybody,
and it's putting people in I think a lot of
pressure social pressure to figure out how do you deal
with your family if you have that like tiny cough
(14:11):
or that slight sniffle. Um. I think I'm finding that
a lot of people are trying to figure out are
they do they have it? And we know the testing
is limited, so what do we do in that situation?
So if you think it's something like allergies, allergies Oftentimes
you can sometimes feel if you're coughing something running down
the back of your throat that you might be triggering
you to cost and you may have things like kind
(14:32):
of itchy red eyes that you're noticing a lot with it.
If you think that might be a component, try taking
it over the counter allergy medicine see if it helps,
because we don't want you, if you're just having allergies,
to be worrying that you have COVID nineteen when there's
something that you can do over the counter to kind
of help you, help reassure you if that is the
case that you have allergies, and help get those under
(14:54):
control for you. But it is very hard when you're
having these mound symptoms because we know that it's just
COVID nineteen will be mild um And what we should
be doing, what we should be doing all the time
is if we're getting sick, we should be trying to
stay away from other people. You know, think of it
as the golden rule. If you don't want other people
who are sick going around and spreading it, we need
(15:16):
to we need to be doing the same thing as
staying at home and trying not to spread it. Ourselves.
But it is a really tricky situation and where you
make that judgment lines can be really difficult. So I
think if you are concerned about it, or you think
that maybe something's getting worse than you need medical care,
but you're not sure, go ahead and call your doctor
(15:38):
and say, this is what's going on. Should I be
coming in? Do I need to worry about it? Is
there something I can do to for example, see if
this is allergies, or discuss with your doctor whether your
symptoms might be more likely to be allergies versus a
cold or flu or COVID nineteen, And is there something
in that fourteen day waiting period for example, if you
(15:59):
have that call for you have that you know some
symptom that you feel could be indicative if you time
yourself to fourteen days. I've heard people doing that to
see if the fourteen days passing nothing more than it
was just allergies. But is there something you can do
like that? So the fourteen days is what we think
is the longest period of time that if you get
exposed to somebody who has COVID nineteen, if you don't
(16:21):
have anything within fourteen days, you are not going to
get anything from that exposure. But if you do get sick,
you will not necessarily be sick for fourteen days. So
what we're recommending for people who actually have symptoms is
that um way for twenty four to forty eight hours
after your fever has resolved and after you're cute respiratory symptoms.
(16:43):
So if you're having a lot of cough for a
lot of trouble breathing, wait until those are gone before
you come out of that isolation. But that you might
have just you know, two or three days of illness,
and if you are fine over the next day or two,
you don't necessarily need to continue to self isolate for
fourteen days if you're already six the fourteen days, if
(17:04):
you've been exposed to somebody and you're worried about getting
the symptoms, that that is the time where we don't
know if you have it yet, and because we think
it's possibly you can spread it even before you have symptoms.
That's why we're wanting people to stay at home. And
and one last question then we'll just ask for some
of your general advice. But do you think it's possible
to get it a second time? Do we know that yet?
(17:26):
We don't know that yet. For a lot of these
other viruses that cause respiratory illnesses, our body learns how
to fight it us, but it doesn't always remember that
for a long time. So if a good example of this,
I think is the flu of we learn how to
fight off the flu, but we can get the flu
again in the future. Um, it might not be right away,
(17:49):
we might not get it within you a month or
two with the same flu strain, but ten fifteen years
from now, it's certainly possible that that could happen. And
so for COVID nineteen, because it's something we've only known
about for a few months, I think it's still too
early to say. If we look at some of the
other coronaviruses that we see going around every year, So
(18:10):
coronaviruses that cause cold, we think that when you get those,
you get some immunity to it, but it's probably not
lasting a lifetime. You may have months to years where
your body remembers how to fight it off, and then
if it's not seeing it again, to kind of boost
that memory up, your body starts forgetting well. Amazing to
hear it's I know so many people are going to
(18:31):
be so excited to hear this conversation. We'll be back
after this break. You know, you talked a little bit
about the Golden Rule, and I just want to talk
to you about that for a minute. I mean, this
moment that we're in, which is a struggle for everybody. Um,
(18:53):
are you seeing acts of kindness or heroic acts that
you feel are giving you hope in this moment? Well,
I get to work with a lot of really fantastic
people who go above and beyond and out of their
way to help take care of people in the hospital
and to try to help make sure that we're all
staying safe. And so every day I get to be
surrounded by people who are really going that extra mile
(19:18):
to help keep other people safe. And that is one
of those things that at the end of the day,
even when you are tired and you're like, Okay, how
am I going to get through another day, when you
see those people around you who are being so selfless
and helping take care of others, it helps keep you
going and help pick you up. And I think we
see that in health care quite a bit, but even
(19:40):
in small ways outside of this, as you mentioned, people
kind of reaching out to their social networks and really
looking out for each other, because that's how we're going
to get through this. So I mean, what you know,
what gives you hope and what gives you the motivation
to keep going? I think knowing that we are doing
everything to try to help take care of each other, UM,
So that is really the reason behind all these difficult
(20:02):
decisions that we're doing, helps keep you going at the
end of the day. And really this is about us
taking care of each other and about our humanity and
we can't lose that in this process if we do
the virus whims. But what we can do to fight
this is to band together, even if that means staying
physically separated. Well, Dr Vanessa Raba, I have to thank
(20:25):
you for all of us. I know what you're doing
at m y U is literally saving lives and your
commitment to this is unbelievable. If there's anything we had
Seneca women can do, UM of course, let us know,
our hope is to get out this information to everybody,
and and we sincerely thank you for taking the time
from a very busy schedule. Thank you very much for
having me. You're listening to Seneca Women conversations on power
(20:51):
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(21:12):
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great day.
Hi. This is Malan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
During this difficult time, we want to bring you special
episodes featuring conversations with women and men who are using
(00:40):
their power for purpose. We'll bring you leaders and experts
from the front lines of the coronavirus who will share tips, tactics,
and inspiration on how to manage in this very difficult
and frankly uncertain time. Our first guest is Dr Vanessa Rabba,
an infectious disease specialist from n y U Landown Health
in New York City. Dr Rabba, thanks so much for
(01:00):
joining us. Thank you for having me so first for
our listeners. What do we know at this point about
coronavirus in the US, in particular, how fast is it
actually growing? So I think this is a really good question.
And certainly we're diagnosing more cases as testing becomes more available,
but we still aren't testing most people, and we don't
(01:21):
know how many cases are actually up there and even
how many people have already had this and already gone
through what might be a very mild illness. So we
don't truly know the number of people in the United
States that have been infected right now, and we probably
won't know until this is all over, because while that
information is very important right now, testing means having people
(01:45):
come out of their home, and we don't want people
who are having symptoms who are potentially infectious, whether with
COVID nineteen or with flu or other viruses that cause
the coal. We want them to stay at home regardless,
and that risk of spreading to other people right now
isn't worth the benefit of having that extra testing information.
(02:07):
So you said something interesting in there, that people might
have it and have just very mild symptoms and not
even know what are the super mild symptoms people might
be having. So mild symptoms might just include it, a
little bit of a cost, a little bit feeling more
tire than usual, um, some mild fevers but nothing too high,
and sometimes a mild headache. Okay, got it, got it?
(02:27):
And and and is there anything that you can do
to understand if it's just a mild symptoms of COVID
or if it's just a regular run of the mill cold.
So overall, we're seeing clothes usually having more symptoms like
a runny nose and sore throats than we are with COVID.
But there are some cases in COVID there are small
percentage to them where they do have those symptoms. So
(02:48):
it's not possible based on symptoms alone to fully differentiate
whether you have COVID nineteen or whether you have another
infection like a cold or flu. Well, that's leads you
to next question, which is a lot of states are
telling folks to practice social distancing and in some cases quarantine.
Why does this work and who needs to be doing this?
(03:10):
So the reason that we're saying that is because the
way this virus seems to be transmitted, so we know
that it's spread by have large droplets in the air.
And these are droplets that we make when we speak,
when we cough, when we sneeze, and they don't stay
in the air very long. They fall to the ground
pretty quickly, but these can travel up to six feet,
which is where that if you're hearing six feet, it's
(03:31):
kind of a social distancing measure. That's where that comes from.
But because all those particles then go and land on
whatever surfaces there. If you touch that surface while the
viruses still there and get it on your hands, you
can potentially infect yourself if you touch your nose, your mouth,
or your eyes, which is why a lot of people
are saying, try to avoid touching your face if possible.
(03:52):
And so that social distancing that we're doing is trying
to get that little bit more spread in between people
so that we do have as much transmission in those
respiratory droplets because they can't travel very far. And also
the quarantine or the idea of kind of socially distancing
of not only physically, but just decreasing the amount of
(04:14):
contact with people you have. And this means different things
for different people. For some people, kind of this quarantine
isolation means staying at home and not having contact with anyone,
especially for people who might be at high risk if
they get COVID nineteen of getting severe disease, so people
who are elderly or people who have underlying medical conditions.
(04:36):
But that might also be just cutting back on the
number of people that you are seeing. So the other
thing that's important to keep in mind is we are
doing all of this to try to protect our physical health,
but we also need to make sure that we're taking
care of our mental health and our emotional health throughout
this whole process, and humans need other human interactions. And
(04:57):
although we do have some great things now with the
left tromics of ways that you can be physically separated
and still connected, we need to make sure that as
we are doing this isolation, that we are not causing
ourselves to be mentally and emotionally isolated from everybody else.
And that's such an important point that I think people
are starting to maybe feel actually, um, we also hear
(05:19):
not people are being asked to shelter in place. What
do you think about that? So, I think right now,
as I mentioned, we don't know the total number of
people out there who have this, and most people who
get this infection are going to have mild symptoms. Of
people who get it have mild to moderate symptoms that
will be kind of similar to what you feel when
(05:39):
you have a colder or flu, but you're able to
stay at home and just take medications to help manage
those symptoms. But or SO can get more sick from
this and can be sick enough that they either need
to be in the hospital or can sometimes need intensive care,
and those are people who don't have as much medical reserves.
(06:00):
So if you have a medical condition where your body
is kind of struggling to deal with that, and then
you put an infection on top of it, it means
you don't have that much reserve to help deal and
fight with this infection and fight it off um And
as we get older, our immune systems don't kind of
weakend over time, so we don't have as strong defenses
(06:20):
to help fight off these infections. And so what we
are trying to do with all of the social distancing
is not necessarily coming out of fear, although there is
quite a bit of fear that comes with a new virus.
But we're doing it because we want to try to
protect the people who are at high risk for getting
severe disease. We want to help protect our loved ones,
(06:41):
our family members, are friends, our neighbors, the people we
know who are more prone to getting sick from this,
and I think we all know those people. And this
is asking everybody to kind of step up and take
care of each other so that we can protect each other.
So a lot of this comes out out of necessarily fear,
but of how are we going to protect our fellow
(07:02):
human being? And is there a way to increase immunity
to this virus? I mean, is there anything that we
could be doing right now that would be helping us
in this moment before we have a vaccine, so we
don't have anything that will increase our immunity specifically to
this virus. If you do have medical conditions at baseline,
and you maybe haven't been keeping them in good checks
(07:23):
as you should, this is the time to try to
get those under a little bit more control, maybe pay
a little bit more attention, because if we can get
you that little bit of extra reserve where your body
can deal with the stress of infection better, that might
make the difference between having an illness where you can
stay at home or an illness that might cause you
to need to land in the hospital. Interesting, this is
(07:45):
a very important time time to be taking care of
your health. I think hopefully everyone is going to be
hearing this is going to be focused on that. I
know there's a lot going into this right now, is
in and the understanding is evolving. But are there scientists
who you feel are making breakthroughs? Any thing that makes
you hopeful as a clinician. So I think we have
a lot of people working on this internationally and doing
(08:06):
good science does take time to make sure it's done right,
but we are seeing hopefully coming down the line in
the future more diagnostic tests and more different diagnostic tests
that maybe can tell us not only if the virus
is there right now, which is what our current test
is able to do, but can tell us if you've
had the virus in the past, so if you've already
(08:28):
had it and cleared it. And we are seeing a
lot more scientists who are starting to do testing for
different medications that are already out there that we can
know their safety record, their track record for other diseases,
to say do they have effect for the virus that
causes COVID nineteen. And I think that's really important because
we need to understand how the best to use the
(08:50):
resources we already have, in addition to trying to develop
new things like vaccines to help prevent against this. We'll
be back after this break. Now, let me ask you
about men versus women, because we're seeing some interesting statistics
(09:12):
pop up. Does this virus treat women differently than men?
So if you look at different studies that have come
out of China varies depending what you read from study
to study. Overall, I think probably not based on gender alans.
There are some differences in China with things like rights
of smoking. So if you think about you know, do
(09:32):
you have really good lung function or your lungs a
little bit down from what they could be at baseline,
that might make a difference. But overall, I think as
a trend, we're seeing men and women getting justice sick
from this um. Again, most of those people are not
very sick, but for the people who are getting more
severely sick, we're not necessarily seeing a big difference in gender.
(09:54):
So um. You know, the one place that we do
see a difference in gender often is in caregiving. And
we know that women and often carry the double burden
in times like these taking care of themselves and also
taking care of their families and children and elderly. Can
we talk a little bit about mothers. What advice do
you have for moms who are taking care of their
kids right now? Are kids in at risk group? So
we know that kids can get infected with asprus just
(10:17):
like everybody else, but fortunately kids seem to be doing
much better with it. So even if they get the infection,
we're seeing very few kids getting severely ill, a lot
less than an adult. So for some reasons, kids seem
a little bit more resilient with this infection. So if
your chilm gets it, the chances are based on what
we know right now, that it's going to be a
(10:37):
pretty mild illness. And obviously on the other side of
the spectrum are are the elderly and older relatives. What
are you seeing there? How are women dealing with the
caretaking responsibilities given the fact that we're trying to isolate
people so that they don't they don't have exposure, And this,
I think is a very good question. And you know,
if we have care taking responsibilities, we can't all of
(10:58):
give those up completely. We don't always have good backup
systems for that. And now it's the time to start
thinking about what would you do if you were to
get sick. So, if you are healthy and you are
giving care to somebody, you can continue to do that,
and you should practice, you know, good social distancing, both
for yourself to minimize the chance you're going to get
(11:19):
sick and spread it to other people, but also for
the person who you're giving care to, but if you
are truly sick, it's time to kind of back down.
We don't want to be exposing people who are more
vulnerable to this infection to the disease, and that's something
that can be really difficult to do because a lot
of us don't have good backup systems. And so I
(11:40):
think moving forward, one thing that's really important to think
about your social network. Think about who can you call
on if you were to get sick, who would be
able to help take care of, you know, an elderly
family member, or even if you were sick and UM
needed to go to the hospital, who could take care
of your children while you're gone, And reaching out to
them and have in that discussion of how are we
(12:02):
going to get through this together? What happens if you
get sick, what happens if I get sick? That's such
an important point in this moment. It feels like community
is is taking on this other level um that we
maybe haven't seen as much in the US in recent years.
And so I feel like everyone's reaching out and and
trying to stay connected closely, which is so important in
this moment. As you said, both for for physical health,
(12:22):
but also for mental health reasons. You know, one group
of women that we haven't spoken about a pregnant women.
Is there anything specific that pregnant women should be doing.
So the good news is what we're seeing so far
and pregnant women is that we're not saying them get
any sicker than the rest of the adults. In some
some case series, and there are only a small amount
of reports and pregnant women out there, so this is limited.
(12:45):
In some case series, we saw less severe cases in
pregnant women compared to otherwise healthy adults. So if you
are pregnant, there's nothing specifically that you have to do differently.
You should still be doing good hand hygiene, trying to
avoid touching your space, doing that social distancing, and trying
to stay away from six people because even if they
(13:06):
don't have COVID nineteen, they could still have something like
a flu, which we know can be more severe and
pregnant women. But we're seeing so far and women even
who have COVID nineteen, that third trimester of pregnancies is
not a lot of that seems to be passed to
the infant. So even if you have COVID nineteen and
your child is born. We aren't seeing a lot of
(13:29):
those babies having COVID nineteen at the time that they're born,
and a lot of times those children have been doing well.
And this only comes from limited numbers um that have
been published so far that we know about. But it's
a very reassuring then, and that's great to hear. That
is good news. Um. You know, I just keep thinking
about all this precautions that we should be taking, and
(13:51):
everyone is so I hope, being abundantly cautious. I mean,
how do you differentiate between sort of run of the
mill allergies and you know, I think everyone's trying to
feel like a little bit of fear setting in that
I'm sick, I have COVID, I can't talk to anybody,
and it's putting people in I think a lot of
pressure social pressure to figure out how do you deal
with your family if you have that like tiny cough
(14:11):
or that slight sniffle. Um. I think I'm finding that
a lot of people are trying to figure out are
they do they have it? And we know the testing
is limited, so what do we do in that situation?
So if you think it's something like allergies, allergies Oftentimes
you can sometimes feel if you're coughing something running down
the back of your throat that you might be triggering
you to cost and you may have things like kind
(14:32):
of itchy red eyes that you're noticing a lot with it.
If you think that might be a component, try taking
it over the counter allergy medicine see if it helps,
because we don't want you, if you're just having allergies,
to be worrying that you have COVID nineteen when there's
something that you can do over the counter to kind
of help you, help reassure you if that is the
case that you have allergies, and help get those under
(14:54):
control for you. But it is very hard when you're
having these mound symptoms because we know that it's just
COVID nineteen will be mild um And what we should
be doing, what we should be doing all the time
is if we're getting sick, we should be trying to
stay away from other people. You know, think of it
as the golden rule. If you don't want other people
who are sick going around and spreading it, we need
(15:16):
to we need to be doing the same thing as
staying at home and trying not to spread it. Ourselves.
But it is a really tricky situation and where you
make that judgment lines can be really difficult. So I
think if you are concerned about it, or you think
that maybe something's getting worse than you need medical care,
but you're not sure, go ahead and call your doctor
(15:38):
and say, this is what's going on. Should I be
coming in? Do I need to worry about it? Is
there something I can do to for example, see if
this is allergies, or discuss with your doctor whether your
symptoms might be more likely to be allergies versus a
cold or flu or COVID nineteen, And is there something
in that fourteen day waiting period for example, if you
(15:59):
have that call for you have that you know some
symptom that you feel could be indicative if you time
yourself to fourteen days. I've heard people doing that to
see if the fourteen days passing nothing more than it
was just allergies. But is there something you can do
like that? So the fourteen days is what we think
is the longest period of time that if you get
exposed to somebody who has COVID nineteen, if you don't
(16:21):
have anything within fourteen days, you are not going to
get anything from that exposure. But if you do get sick,
you will not necessarily be sick for fourteen days. So
what we're recommending for people who actually have symptoms is
that um way for twenty four to forty eight hours
after your fever has resolved and after you're cute respiratory symptoms.
(16:43):
So if you're having a lot of cough for a
lot of trouble breathing, wait until those are gone before
you come out of that isolation. But that you might
have just you know, two or three days of illness,
and if you are fine over the next day or two,
you don't necessarily need to continue to self isolate for
fourteen days if you're already six the fourteen days, if
(17:04):
you've been exposed to somebody and you're worried about getting
the symptoms, that that is the time where we don't
know if you have it yet, and because we think
it's possibly you can spread it even before you have symptoms.
That's why we're wanting people to stay at home. And
and one last question then we'll just ask for some
of your general advice. But do you think it's possible
to get it a second time? Do we know that yet?
(17:26):
We don't know that yet. For a lot of these
other viruses that cause respiratory illnesses, our body learns how
to fight it us, but it doesn't always remember that
for a long time. So if a good example of this,
I think is the flu of we learn how to
fight off the flu, but we can get the flu
again in the future. Um, it might not be right away,
(17:49):
we might not get it within you a month or
two with the same flu strain, but ten fifteen years
from now, it's certainly possible that that could happen. And
so for COVID nineteen, because it's something we've only known
about for a few months, I think it's still too
early to say. If we look at some of the
other coronaviruses that we see going around every year, So
(18:10):
coronaviruses that cause cold, we think that when you get those,
you get some immunity to it, but it's probably not
lasting a lifetime. You may have months to years where
your body remembers how to fight it off, and then
if it's not seeing it again, to kind of boost
that memory up, your body starts forgetting well. Amazing to
hear it's I know so many people are going to
(18:31):
be so excited to hear this conversation. We'll be back
after this break. You know, you talked a little bit
about the Golden Rule, and I just want to talk
to you about that for a minute. I mean, this
moment that we're in, which is a struggle for everybody. Um,
(18:53):
are you seeing acts of kindness or heroic acts that
you feel are giving you hope in this moment? Well,
I get to work with a lot of really fantastic
people who go above and beyond and out of their
way to help take care of people in the hospital
and to try to help make sure that we're all
staying safe. And so every day I get to be
surrounded by people who are really going that extra mile
(19:18):
to help keep other people safe. And that is one
of those things that at the end of the day,
even when you are tired and you're like, Okay, how
am I going to get through another day, when you
see those people around you who are being so selfless
and helping take care of others, it helps keep you
going and help pick you up. And I think we
see that in health care quite a bit, but even
(19:40):
in small ways outside of this, as you mentioned, people
kind of reaching out to their social networks and really
looking out for each other, because that's how we're going
to get through this. So I mean, what you know,
what gives you hope and what gives you the motivation
to keep going? I think knowing that we are doing
everything to try to help take care of each other, UM,
So that is really the reason behind all these difficult
(20:02):
decisions that we're doing, helps keep you going at the
end of the day. And really this is about us
taking care of each other and about our humanity and
we can't lose that in this process if we do
the virus whims. But what we can do to fight
this is to band together, even if that means staying
physically separated. Well, Dr Vanessa Raba, I have to thank
(20:25):
you for all of us. I know what you're doing
at m y U is literally saving lives and your
commitment to this is unbelievable. If there's anything we had
Seneca women can do, UM of course, let us know,
our hope is to get out this information to everybody,
and and we sincerely thank you for taking the time
from a very busy schedule. Thank you very much for
having me. You're listening to Seneca Women conversations on power
(20:51):
and Purpose brought to you by the Seneca Women podcast
Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner
p ANDNG. Listen to a women conversations on power and
Purpose on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts, and please support this podcast
by telling your friends, subscribing, and rating us. For more
(21:12):
information on Seneca Women, follow us on social media, visit
our website Seneca Women dot com, and check out the
Seneca Women app free in the app Store. Have a
great day.
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