Episode #75: Coronavirus
Today on Made Visible, we’re covering the recent coronavirus outbreak and the impact that global health challenges can have on people with invisible and chronic illnesses. To get a variety of expert perspectives, I spoke with Hernando Garzon, MD, an emergency medicine physician with experience in disaster response and global health; Andrew Kessler, founder of Scough, a company that makes scarves and bandanas that function as masks; and John Boyle, president and CEO of the Immune Deficiency Foundation. I’m grateful to each of them for speaking to me about this complex issue. Whether you’re concerned about your own health, worried for friends who are immunocompromised and/or parents who are older, or you’ve managed to keep a cool head about it all, this episode sheds light on where we can turn for trusted information, what we should stay focused on, and the best ways to manage risk and keep ourselves and others safe.
Hernando Garzon, MD is an Emergency Medicine physician practicing with Kaiser Permanente in California since 1992. In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Garzon has extensive experience in disaster response and Global Health. Dr. Garzon has also held multiple leadership roles in health care, including Director of Emergency Management for Northern California Kaiser Permanente, and he still serves as the Medical Director for Sacramento County’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS).
In his health care leadership roles Dr. Garzon has participated in standardizing Emergency Department flow and operations, as well as emergency preparedness, trauma and infectious disease surge response, and operational planning for a 21-hospital health system. Dr. Garzon’s disaster response experience includes 14 domestic disaster response deployments with the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue system, and 19 international disaster responses with multiple humanitarian relief organizations. This work has included opening and operating two Ebola treatment centers in Sierra Leone (2014), a malnutrition treatment hospital in eastern Kenya (2011), and a trauma hospital during the Haiti earthquake (2010).
Hernando served as the Director for Kaiser Permanente's Global Health Program from inception in 2008 until 2018, and in this role helped develop capacity building volunteer clinical programs in Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Vietnam, Cambodia, Honduras, Colombia and other countries. Hernando teaches frequently on disaster medical care, humanitarian medical response, and the health effects of climate change. He has served on federal and California state panels to define Crisis Medical Care guidelines and Pandemic Flu care guidelines, and has been a consultant for the US. Department of State on medical care for weapons of mass destruction.
“All of our interventions are designed to decrease the height of that bell-shaped curve and also shorten the length of it—in other words, make the outbreak last less long and infect less people.”
Andrew Kessler is the founder of Scough, a popular wearable health-tech accessory lauded for its design-driven approach to public health problems. Scough is a product that filters pollution, smog, tear gas and/or anything else that gets in the way of big, easy breaths. Scough makes scarves and bandanas that hold the highest-quality bio-defense grade active-carbon filters on the planet. Scough filters are tested in an independent lab to make sure the technology and design are working hard for our customers.
Kessler is also the CEO of Articlegroup.com and articlegroup.org. His work focuses on solving oddly-sized creative problems, building audiences, and sending cute robots to Mars. Andrew’s experience working in a variety of organizations and across disciplines, from advertising agencies, to start-ups, to Fortune 100 brands, gives him the insight to solve systemic business problems with creative marketing solutions. Andrew’s award-winning work includes content and campaigns for NASA, Simons Foundation, Nike, American Express, Google, and many others.
“We don’t want to encourage people to panic buy masks right now because we want to make sure there’s enough for first responders, but it’s good practice to cover up if you’re feeling sick. And so that we want to be very supportive of.”
John Boyle was born with a form of primary immunodeficiency called X-Linked Agammaglobulinemia (XLA). After being diagnosed when he was six months old, John was put on an antibody replacement therapy. Because of his early diagnosis and maintenance therapy, John has enjoyed a full life. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a Master’s degree from Notre Dame of Maryland University. For the last two years he has served as the President & CEO of the Immune Deficiency Foundation. He resides in Maryland with his wife (Tara) and his 10-year old son (Johnny).
“For all these fears that you have, for all these concerns, you have to talk with your doctor about your specific issues and your specific vulnerabilities.”
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