Transcript:
Hello, I’m Dr. Hamilton-Stubbs with Dr. Hamilton-Stubbs’ Sleep and Total Wellness Institute and this is my coronavirus update for this week. Thanks for tuning in. Today I want to talk about returning to places of worship we would all like to return to our places of worship those of us who attend regularly miss seeing our friends, we miss the fellowship and the church needs our financial support which I understand. We can do online but the giving seems to be a little less than when we're actually at the building and then we have a number of people who may want to come to church who haven't been to church because we are living in stressful times. There are protests all over the country, people are dying, people are hurting, and sometimes we just need a place to come where we feel safe and for many of us those are our places of worship. But before we return and rush into our churches, we must realize that business won't be as usual we have to make some changes and this is throughout history. So the people of the lord, whichever faith you happen to participate with, realize that we are not in control but we have to learn to live with what we are given by our God. One of the things I want to start with is with an article that my husband wrote Reverend Jonathan Stubbs. He is the associate minister at Bethel Baptist Church and a professor in law at the law school in Richmond at University of Richmond. His article is entitled where true worshipers gather. What the article says is that in a in a summary is that we don't really need to be in a building to worship the Lord. Sure we'd like to come there but we can worship the Lord wherever two or three are gathered and we are gathered even if it is online. So he talks about the importance of us knowing when to return and keeping in mind that God is spirit and his worshipers worship in spirit and in truth John 4 23 24.
I want to review briefly what the coronavirus is. There's a lot of terminology that is being confused so we'll just go back and talk a little bit to clarify some things the current pandemic is being caused by a virus called SARS-COV2. It is in a coronavirus family. It is in the family of coronaviruses and they--these are viruses that are commonly in animals and have been known to infect humans. One virus in that family is SARS-COV1 and this virus caused an epidemic in the early 2000s. SARS, s-a-r-s, stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome. The SARS-COV2 virus causes a disease which is called COVID and because it was first identified in 2019. It is has been labeled by the World Health Organization as COVID-19. So there's a family called coronavirus and in that family there are many viruses and the one that is affecting us causing the pandemic is SARS-COV2 which is causing a disease called COVID-19.
Before we open our church we have to understand or our places of worship before we return we have to understand how the virus spreads and educate our parishioners about how the virus spread we know from research that the virus spreads through the respiratory system. Breathing, talking, singing: these all spread the virus. There are two things that happen when we talk. We form droplets and these are about a millimeter in size. They're kind of heavy and they fall within six feet from the person who is expelling this droplet but then researchers are finding that the virus can also be aerosolized and when the virus is aerosolized, the particle is much smaller and can go farther. And this is a concern when we come back into our places of worship because if you sing you talk louder and you spread the virus more so we have to keep that in mind when we think about returning and what we will do when we return. Churches are a special concern because there are three things that increase the risk of getting infected. How close you are to the person who's carrying the virus, and remember that a person can be asymptomatic, the level of the person's voice, tends to correlate with how much virus is spread and how far the virus will travel, and then the duration of exposure. Our churches or places of worship tend to put us in a situation where we are at risk because of all three of these things. In mid-march, the Arkansas Depart of Health identified two index cases and this happened in a husband and wife and it centered around their activities at their local church. They were able to do contact tracing through the health department and find that just two people had infected hundreds of people in that community. So when we are thinking about returning to places of worship, we must consider what is happening in a community. So this talk is not to tell you to return or not to return is to give you some guidance to understand the guidelines that have been put in place by the Virginia Department of Health, our governor Northam, the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and I also like to look at the institute that is under the guidance of Dr. Fauci.
There's a lot to follow and to keep up with and it's not just simply opening up the doors and inviting everyone back. There's going to be some changes and we need to get people mentally ready for that. I suggest that we start doing those things prior to opening the door letting people know things are going to be different and then letting them have a chance to adjust to that. And express their concerns and maybe providing some suggestions. Because there's so much work that needs to be done, I think it's easier to create a team and you're going to need a team that would divide this complex task of opening safely. I recommend that it be divided into three parts. There's a part that I consider your pre-opening planning, then we need a team of people who will, take care of the things that need to be done while worshiping service is appearing, and then you need a team who will look at and address the recommendations for what should be done after worship service if you have an insurance policy you may want to review this before you open the doors to make sure that you are able to meet all the requirements and check for updates if you violate the terms of your contract your place of worship may lose insurance coverage also check the department of health or your government website for new laws that could be affecting you in your area today i just want to give you a little bit of overview of what these three teams will be doing and then we'll come back so the pre-cleaning pre-planning team needs to have a way to identify people who are at high risk some of these people and rightly so may be hesitant to returning to a place of worship because a place of worship is a high-risk environment. In my opinion if certain things are not in place or if there are lots of carpets or upholstered furniture including the pews if the windows don't open and if the building has been sitting empty for a while so let's go back and identify the people who are at risk so that you can identify who this might be in your congregation people who are over 65 years of age people with moderate to severe asthma people who have the following conditions chronic kidney disease chronic lung disease diabetes blood disorders immunocompromised people with liver disease heart disease and people who have a body mass index above 40. I know that body weight is a delicate subject. As a sleep disorder specialist, I see lots of people who have obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and some of those people are above their ideal body weight. It is a very delicate subject I am aware of that, but like I tell my patients you cannot address the problem if you don't face the problem. So if you don't know your body mass index you can go to our website www.drrhamiltonstubs.com/blog and you might find it under sleep tips blog and then in the search block just put in BMI that stands for body mass index which is a calculation of your height and weight and it tells you the proportion and what we're looking for is your body mass index greater than 40 or equal to 40. If it is you are at the severe obese level and you are at risk the other group of people that you may want to identify are people who live in nursing homes or group homes because they are at high risk as well when you start to identify people you have to be cognizant of privacy laws so let people self-identify and you don't really need to know which one of these disorder the person has just let them know what places they can sit what precautions have been put in place if they choose to return.
So this is all we have for today our time is up and each of my talks until we complete it will be on returning to places of worship. Next week we'll go over the duties and responsibilities of the three stages of planning to reopen and then we may touch on some of the legal implications that places of worship should be aware of. Thank you for listening, have a blessed day and may God have mercy on us all.