By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Health Department Director Nick Baldetti sees the upcoming fall season as something of grave concern if people do not make personal choices to slow the spread of COVID-19.
"For the mainstay of the mortalities that we've seen in the nation and in the state, underlying conditions are a significant indicator of the potential of COVID enacting a fatality," Baldetti said.
Baldetti's concern is that even if there aren't other comorbidities, we could be facing multiple respiratory threats once the weather cools.
"The concern is not that COVID-19 as a viral body itself is going to enact widespread death," Baldetti said. "That isn't the concern, but what needs to be understood is that SARS-CoV-2 virus, the way it impacts the human body, it is an immunoparalyzing viral body."
Once we're into flu and pneumonia season, the multiple threats could cause further problems, if COVID-19 isn't stopped now.
"Simply because you contract SARS-CoV-2 virus, doesn't mean you cannot contract anything else," Baldetti said. "As such, I would hope that people understand the implications of that. Having a large amount of people infected with this virus at a time when we have other seasonal bacterial and viral infections floating around, I hope that impresses upon people, how potentially dangerous the fall and winter can be if we do not mitigate the spread now."
Baldetti believes that any talk of future shutdowns, if they even come up, will be political in nature. Baldetti believes that should not be the case.