Announcements/Business:
 
  • Reminder: we will not meet next Tuesday March 30th
  • Broomfield Rotary fundraiser:  Crossing Top Golf Holes for Hope Open April 25, 1-4:  $100 entry; only 20 teams of six may register. 
  • St. Pat’s Fundraising update:  $160 plus donations from Angela’s Leprechaun crew. The fundraiser will continue through March 31.
  • May 8 Day of Service:  Conifer Radio will do a PSA—Amanda will be our voice.  The three pantries have responded with the list of food donations they need and will have a volunteer available to collect the food at our collection site for each of the pantries.  Lesley will check with King Soopers about being able to collect in front of the store or at First Bank next to King Soopers.  We need to come up with ideas for promotion: messages thru PTAs’ and school news, church bulletins, Social Media, My Mountain Town, Flume, Mountain Connection and other new outlets.  Send Lesley other ideas. This event has been created via District 5450 to promote Rotary in all our communities.
  • Vaccine update from CHS:  Stride Health Care will host April 16,17 J&J vaccine administrations at CHS.  Contact Stride Health Care to make an appointment. It will be a drive through with 5-minute wait after the immunization.  https://stridechc.org/ or call 303-360-6276 for an appointment.
 
Program:  Dr. David Woodland, Researcher on Pandemics
  • “Woody” is President Elect of Rotary, Summit County!
  • The science behind pandemics:  Were we expecting a pandemic?---"The pandemic clock is ticking---we just don’t know what time it is.” Edgar Marcuse, MD, PhD
  • We have had pandemics throughout human history: The Plague of Justinian, 541-750 CE.  Smallpox—1157BC was found in the body of the Egyptian Pharoh;  Killed an estimated one billion people (now eradicated by vaccine).
  • Spanish influenza 1918-19: killed 25-50 million worldwide
  • AIDS:  killed 40 million worldwide—and is on-going; we have not been able to develop a vaccine
  • Tuberculosis: kills one every 21 second—on-going (problem with drug resistance)
  • African Swine Fever:  25% of pigs worldwide had to be slaughtered.
  • Emerging diseases occur as new disease all the time 
  • Re-emerging disease:  recur over and over, often as variants
  • Dr. Woodland provided a world map which showed all the different diseases that have and are currently occurring world-wide.  
  • The corna-viruses: SARS-CoV-1 (Guandong Province—low transmissibility but high pathogenicity) MERS-CoV  (High pathogenicity); SARS-1, SARS-2 (covid19)
  • Why do we get pandemics?---the viruses reside in animals in the wild and then can jump to humans as we have increasing contact between wild animals and as domesticated animals are infected by wild animals and transmit to humans.
  • MERS and SARS1—bats carry and transmit to other animals.
  • COVID19 likely came from bats, transmitted to mammals, then to humans---the virus has to adapt to bind to human receptors.  The virus mutates to first attach, then break into the lung cells.  The new variants allow greater infectivity or may reduce the effect of vaccines.  
  • Factors affecting pandemic severity:  well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold---which can reduce susceptibility to the COVID19, as a person develops generalized immunity.  
  • RNA vaccine:  easy to make and safe; it is easy to change to adapt to variants (storage at cold temps is problem).
  • The Bottom Line:
  • Pandemics have repeatedly affected human populations
  • New and old pandemic pathogens are constantly lurking in animal reservoirs
  • Transmission from animals to humans is exacerbated with our increasing encroachment on wild animal habitats
  • We are likely to suffer more pandemic pathogens in the future
“Woody” is available to speak to any interested group:  Woody1630@gmail.com 
 
 

Welcome to our Guest: Dano Howell from Bailey