Hello, friends.
Welcome back.
We’re glad to get to spend some time with you again today as we begin to move towards some of the end of the interviews that we’ve had this Lenten season and I believe today is our sort of penultimate interview.
Second to last as we get an opportunity to talk with Jason Harrington.
If you don’t know Jason personally,
I suspect if you’re from the Lakes area,
you’ve heard his name at some point.
He is the president at the Lakes Regional Healthcare and the hospital and a lot of the sort of medical establishment here in the area.
And he was gracious enough to stop by the church and to share with us a little bit of his experience from the medical but also sort of community aspect in this season.
Yeah, I think this is the one exception of our interviews being church members.
And in this case,
we just thought that an opportunity to talk to Jason would be really interesting.
Someone who occupied a very specific and very challenging role during all of this stuff that happened during 2020.
And someone who’s vested in the community and we are a small enough community in which being the CEO at the hospital doesn’t change your community relations and Jason has some things to say about that.
You know, the reality that people know him and people are going to see him and ask opinions and want to have those conversations.
And so I hope this is helpful.
I think it’s a look that we have into a place that most of us probably don’t understand professionally.
So I think it was,
for me at least,
it was pretty intriguing.
This has been the case,
actually, as we’ve gone along with some of our reflections,
I found myself in some cases wanting to point to examples from interviews that we had that just by nature of when we recorded them,
you all hadn’t seen yet.
And this is one of those interviews, actually,
that I’ve gone back to several times.
And I think one of the things I want to sort of point out at the front end so that you might look for is I think Jason has given a lot of thought to helping tease out what things can we be certain of and what things do we need to be very careful to make clear this is my opinion of what I think I know to be true.
And as he teases that out in the conversation,
he does so personally,
he does so organizationally as he looks at it from a leadership perspective.
He even does that when he talks a little bit about communication and what he’s learned.
And so I just sort of offer to you,
keep in mind, sort of looking for that as the interview goes forward.
There’s been several times when I thought, you know,
Jason’s insight there was very helpful to me and my own thinking about some of the lessons I’ve learned.
Yeah, again, I think it’s kind of a fascinating place to occupy when so many people want certainty,
and they want it quickly.
And yet the nature of research,
the nature of medicine is process and testing,
and in many cases,
slow to come to answers.
And so wrestling at the intersection of those two things had to be an interesting experience.
And we are grateful to Jason for sharing his time with us and that he would volunteer to come in and talk to us and be willing to do that.
We’re really grateful for that.
Without further ado, here’s another reflection on what we learned in 2020.
Everybody,
welcome.
Thanks for being with us again as we continue to have this series of reflections on 2020 experience today.
We have a really neat opportunity.
The CEO of our local hospital,
Jason Harrington, has agreed to be with us,
not through a church connection,
but just as we consider
what it has looked like from a public health standpoint and from a community standpoint to navigate this last year we’ve all been in.
And Jason, we’re really grateful for your time and for your willingness to have the conversation with us.
No, yeah, thank you for having me.
Happy to do it and excited to,
well, I don’t know how excited I am to continue to talk about COVID-19.
It’s been my life for,
you know, the last nine months.
I imagine you’ve had no conversation about vaccine and masks and all that kind of stuff, right?
That’s probably never leaves you.
Well, thanks for doing it with us.
So if you can cast back the memory to nearly a year ago,
in fact, probably right at a year ago,
the first rumblings kind of started.
How do you remember that process of getting word that something was coming,
of realizing that it may be a thing that was going to have significant impact on public health,
both infrastructure,
but even community, the idea of shutdown,
which in my recollection is not really something that we’ve faced.
I mean, it’s not been a part of public health in the recent past.
I think that’s accurate.
Yeah, I know.
I think you’re absolutely right.
I think just thinking about the vaccine,
you know, there’s a lot of discussion about going back to the time of polio that,
you know, it’s the last time we did kind of mass vaccinations like that.
I think,
you know, going back to, you know, almost a year from now,
you know, I think when the pandemic or the idea of the pandemic first came out,
in the time that I’ve been around,
you know, we’ve had bird flu,
we’ve had swine flu.
So there have been, you know,
pandemics like that or what we imagine them to be like over time.
So I think the initial reaction to what was happening around the world was,
you know, okay, but, you know, we sit in the middle of the country and assuming things ever get to us,
they’ll get to us much later.
And I think the initial reaction was one of,
I think, cautious optimism.
And then I think when we started to have our first couple of cases in Iowa,
I think there was this probably a bit of an overreaction from healthcare providers at that particular point in time.
So I think,
you know, we shut down certain services in the hospital.
I think we really started to close our doors to the community to say, hey,
you know, please only come here if you really need to be here.
And really, I think in hindsight,
it’s always 2020 and you can Monday morning, quarterback, whatever.
I think what we did early was,
I think,
to create maybe somewhat intentionally this fear around the pandemic.
But we really didn’t see the numbers until,
you know, months later.
So I think from a healthcare perspective,
I think we really did hurt ourselves from a financial perspective because there were many services that we just shut down being as proactive as we could that are really important services to the community as well as to the hospital.
And so we went from this kind of cautious optimism to this kind of premature overreaction to,
you know, we started to see cases grow.
Then we got in the fall and we’re like, cases like,
you know, started to spike at that particular point in time.
So we went back to our reaction that,
you know, or what was then an overreaction,
but started to do some of those things back again for the community.
And so it was really a,
and continues to be,
I think, a little bit really a bizarre time because I think COVID-19,
there’s a lot of,
we’ve all had some coronavirus over time.
You know, COVID-19 is a different series of that.
And so because of that,
the science has evolved over time,
and it’s changed over time.
And I think the direction from the government,
the direction from local public health,
the direction from the state has changed constantly.
And I think because of that,
I think it’s created some real doubt for people about,
you know, how real is this thing?
You told us last week, it was this.
You’re telling us this week, it’s this.
I think from a leader perspective,
I think there’s some really good things that I think at the end of the day will come out of this.
I think for me personally,
you know, if I ever needed lessons in humility,
I got a lot of them because it really was this,
you know, so on Thursday, I say this, and on Tuesday, the state comes back and says, well,
you know, it’s not 10 days,
it’s 14 days, or it’s not 14 days,
it’s 21 days.
And I can’t tell you how many times that happened.
And, you know, and as a leader of an organization,
it’s extremely frustrating.
And it’s exceedingly humbling because it’s like,
you know, we have sort of limited control over this thing.
But it’s our responsibility to keep the community as informed as we possibly can.
And that message was constantly changing.
So for people in the community,
to have frustration,
you know, was understandable.
And then at some point in that process,
we were talking about this pre our discussion,
you know, this became a political sort of statement,
you know, as opposed to do you believe COVID is real,
do you not believe COVID is real,
there’s all this conspiracy theory around it.
And, and, of course,
depending upon the media,
and what you see as news or don’t see as news,
it, you know, certainly, you know, promulgated a lot of that,
and a lot of that feeling of,
you know, you really need to pick a side here.
You know, are you are you pro COVID?
Are you anti COVID?
It’s like picking the team as we were talking earlier,
which even made it that much more bizarre.
You know, we’re a we’re a science based organization.
And so we use science to make decisions.
Well, the science evolved and is continuing to evolve.
And so it doesn’t make it wrong.
It means over time,
we continue to learn more.
And we will.
But in the in between time,
you’re living in kind of,
you know, purgatory, really, it’s like,
okay, well, I’m just gonna tell you,
here’s the answer today.
I’m not going to tell you a week from now,
we’re not going to have the same discussion.
And I’m going to tell you a different thing.
Yeah, and I think from organizationally,
that’s tough.
I think when you’re building credit,
trying to build credibility with,
you know, a community that relies on you for what you do.
I think that’s a that’s a hard thing.
It’s a frustrating thing as well.
So, you know, just lots of, you know, now, now we’re to the vaccine,
and there’s, you know, different feelings about the vaccine.
And I think,
you know,
and this isn’t a political statement when I use the term conservative.
But but I think Northwest Iowans,
I think Iowans generally,
but Northwest Iowans, in particular,
are independent.
We’re tough.
You know,
we’re hard workers, we get through things,
because that’s what we do.
And, and I think,
I think the whole COVID thing has really pushed up against that,
you know, that independent feeling that we believe in Northwest Iowa,
which, which, you know, 99% of the time,
I think that’s good.
That’s why I’m, you know,
native Northwest Iowa, and that those are fundamental values for me.
And even that, for me, personally, sometimes gets to be a challenge between my personal feeling and sometimes my professional feeling about things.
So, in your sense,
I don’t know to what extent you could speak to this,
Jason, but you made reference to that kind of period of the in between.
And in the lakes area,
you know, we had this thing in the spring where this thing is serious,
it looks like it’s rolling toward us.
And then there was that wait,
you know, you watch the number,
there’s one case over here somewhere, maybe there’s,
you know,
but, but there wasn’t the wave that we kind of expected and maybe that we even thought we were seeing on the coast.
Was that fairly typical?
Is that a geographic reality?
Was that fairly typical of the entire Midwest outside of,
say, some of the large cities?
Yeah, I, you know,
I think everybody’s sort of expected and you would,
you know, you take the sun,
you take any holiday,
which, you know, would be a mass congregation of people.
I think in the lakes area in the summer,
again, we have various events,
many things of which we canceled,
but, but lots of things that bring people together.
And, and, and for the most part,
with a couple of minor exceptions,
we never really saw those significant spikes.
Now there, there will be,
you know, I don’t know that it’s conspiracy theory,
but, you know, people will say, well, that’s fine.
You had all these people come in and then they took COVID back home with them wherever home was.
Now,
you know, to your, to part of your question,
I think we, we really did see very late in the game.
So late fall, you know, is really when we saw the spike in COVID cases,
not only cases.
So, so I think at our highest point,
I think we had a 20% positivity rate, you know,
so we had 38 deaths that,
that occurred within lakes region of here.
Some of them would be attributable to the county,
some of them would not.
And the vast majority of those deaths were again,
kind of late in the,
in the pandemic.
So October, November,
December.
And, you know, and even that back to the polarizing part of that,
you know, nobody could really agree,
or we could have a debate about, well,
you know,
did they really die of COVID?
Did they not die of COVID?
Was COVID a contributing factor to their death?
But I mean, I think you look around the state in,
in, this is what I always come back to in terms of the seriousness of the pandemic,
is so there’s been roughly 5000 deaths today,
as of today in the state of Iowa.
Well,
I, you know, I’m from Ida Grove,
so Ida Grove is my hometown.
Well, my hometown’s population of 2000 people.
So, so effectively,
you know,
the two towns of Ida Grove are gone from the state because of the pandemic.
Now, you know, again, did the virus contribute?
Again, many people that were in that age group were older folks in our communities.
But in the absence of getting COVID,
would they have passed imminently?
Probably not.
So anyway, you know, even that’s been,
I think, you know, anyway, lots of things to debate about it.
I think you’re right,
though.
It created this kind of strange bubble in which there was initially a lot of fear or uncertainty, at least.
And then there was this period where,
at least from a day to day perspective,
not a lot was happening.
And I think it gave,
it gave all of us those moments to kind of say, well,
this is the, this is the big deal,
you know, this is it, this is what we’ve got.
And then and then maybe by the time we did start building that,
I think a lot of people were already pretty fatigued,
pretty tired and maybe a little less able to commit the mental energy back to,
OK, now we’re now we’re dealing with it.
It’s been a really interesting.
The other thing professionally it created and maybe there were people who saw this coming.
But as an outsider,
I remember being fascinated reading an article about the damage COVID did to health care financially,
because exactly as you said,
the same day surgeries aren’t happening.
A lot of the infrastructure of the hospital.
So in this middle,
in the middle of this health crisis,
health centers then are being negatively affected.
And that was not something that I would have put together.
It makes sense on the back end.
But as a but as a non as a person not in that realm, you know,
trying to balance all that must have gotten interesting as well.
It really was.
And it continues to be,
to some degree, I think, you know, early on in that process.
And I use this term,
you know, in the in the organization.
In other words,
we did a really,
really good job scaring people and not inappropriately,
but just saying, listen, this is a big deal.
And so, you know, part of our reward then down down the road in the pandemic was I think we created this mindset for people that,
you know, the best place for you to get COVID is at the hospital.
Well, the reality is the exact opposite of that.
I mean, we take every,
you know, we make every effort to for to be precautionary to screen people.
And so the organization is perfectly safe to come to.
But for a part of the pandemic, we said, listen,
unless you’re really sick, don’t come here.
Partially, because we didn’t want you coming if,
you know, you were you might have COVID otherwise and didn’t need hospitalization.
And so in the process of that,
we end up to your point of harming ourselves and financially harming ourselves.
And we still and it’s amazing to me,
you know, in primary care, so your family physician locally,
you know, we’re still,
you know,
visits are behind 10 percent.
And and that’s still a little bit of people going,
you’re not sure that,
you know, I want to go in there because maybe I’ll catch the virus or something.
I think even our emergency department,
which I found really,
really kind of fascinating,
is that those numbers were down significantly.
Now, again, not unusual if you live in a small community and you don’t have urgent care,
you don’t have a clinic that’s open,
you know, 24/7.
People use the emergency room for other than its intended purposes sometimes because, again, it’s open.
And but I think what’s happened is I think people have kind of come to the realization that, well,
maybe I really don’t need to come to the emergency room.
Maybe it can wait until Monday or maybe it can wait until tomorrow morning or so.
But we’ve seen our emergency numbers go down and that would be the only I mean,
that for me, that’s the only thing that would would make sense to me as to why.
But it’s just it’s interesting that dynamic is really very interesting.
And so looking back, it’s interesting.
Obviously,
fear can be a good motivator.
But do I hear you saying you think maybe the medical community overdid it a little bit or played that card earlier than looking back?
You wish you would have or or do you wish maybe logic sometimes doesn’t.
The thing about fear is it speaks directly to our emotions and therefore maybe influences our actions a little quicker.
What maybe have you learned in regard to that playing that fear card now?
Yeah, I think I think it’s an excellent question.
I think what happened is so when we again,
really fear on our own part,
too, of, you know, very early on closing surgeries,
closing some of those services was was really at our point in time,
our reaction to what was happening in other parts of the country.
I mean, you’re reading this stuff out in New York,
you’re reading this stuff from the coast and it’s like, wow,
and it’s coming.
So so so we put this really significant effort forth to prevent this.
And then you describe it earlier.
I think you have these kind of, you know,
peaks and valleys.
So then we do this and then there’s this low rate.
So the so the virus doesn’t really show up here for in force for the next three or four months.
So in the in between time,
I think you have people going,
yeah,
you know,
maybe that’s not really a thing.
Maybe that’s and I think you get fatigued from and,
you know, I’m not reading in the paper that our positivity rates are real high.
And, you know, so so I think in retrospect,
you know, we would have done that same thing,
not in maybe using the term fear isn’t right.
But, you know,
create that there was never this,
you know, so the intensity of the things that we were doing right now that didn’t material materialized.
But four months later.
Yeah.
So so, you know, we ended up, I think, harming the message because,
you know, the strength of the message was too early.
And our reaction to it was too early.
And then by the time you get to the fall, people are like,
you know,
I don’t want to wear a mask.
I don’t want a social distance.
I’d really like to see mom and dad.
I’d really like to see my grandparents.
You know, I think it’s all those things.
And then in the in between time,
I think for that elderly population,
you know, we they have been isolated for nine months, 10 months.
You know, did it have to be that long?
I’m not,
you know, I don’t know.
But it seemed like to your question,
because of that,
you know, probably, yes, probably that initially in those first couple of months,
was that an overreaction in Iowa?
Probably. But how could you know that?
Right.
And you couldn’t.
Like I said, you can Monday morning quarterback that stuff.
But but I think about that group in in,
you know, as we talk about vaccines and those sorts of things.
And of course, everybody has an opinion about how vaccines should be rolled out and who should get those.
And, you know, we feel very strongly that it’s that group.
I mean, that, you know, that group, you know, has been imprisoned, isn’t the right word.
But but they’ve been self quarantined,
many of them to their home for that entire time.
Yeah. I mean, I’ve I’ve talked to many of those patients who said,
listen, out of fear of dying because I’ve got other medical conditions or otherwise.
I mean, I don’t even go to the grocery store,
you know, haven’t been to church in nine months,
haven’t, you know, any of that.
And that’s a group that needs that.
You know, nursing home residents is just an even better example.
You know, they haven’t been allowed visitors for so I can stand outside mom’s window and,
you know, attempt to communicate with her.
But that’s as good as it gets.
And I mean, that’s just a population we have to.
And, you know, we’ve got to do everything we can to end that for them.
And then for the most part,
not for the rest of us,
because many of us have underlying chronic conditions.
But the impact of that virus isn’t the same.
I mean, it just isn’t.
You can look at it again,
the thirty eight deaths that we’ve had.
I think thirty seven of those thirty eight were people seventy five or older.
I think we had one that was that was younger than that.
So, you know, you look at the risk for the rest of us and, you know,
I can tell you if we get a thousand doses tomorrow,
we’d be ready to give a thousand doses.
That’s not the reality.
It’s just not getting doses like that.
And so, you know,
every dose we get goes out the week we get it and it’ll continue to be that way.
But, you know, and even that,
you know, if you’re a sixty five year old and, you know,
recently had a heart transplant,
well, how am I less important or more important than the eighty five year old who maybe has diabetes or whatever it is?
And so, you know, it gets really difficult,
you know, to try to have to make those decisions because you’ve got a limited number of vaccines.
And fortunately, I’ve got a really great chief medical officer and a great medical staff and a team that’s willing to say, listen,
you know,
we could just open the doors for anybody sixty five and older on a first come first for the basis,
because that’d be easy.
It’d be the wrong thing,
but it’d be easy.
And so, you know, we’re trying to balance that with constant criticism about, you know,
wow,
I mean, the example I gave you or maybe I’m sixty four and really sick.
Well,
somebody, the governor in this case said, well,
sorry,
but unless you’re sixty five or older and,
you know, so it just it becomes this really sort of challenging thing.
Jason, previously you mentioned the importance of messaging.
And here at the church,
we’ve always been an organization that focuses on communication.
That’s a lot of what we do.
Right. And a lot of local organizations have focused on communications.
We all have websites.
But I think haven’t we all experienced how important communication is in this season?
And I wonder if you look at sort of where you as a significant community organization began this whole pandemic and then now where you find yourself today,
what communication lessons have you learned and how do you think that maybe that will shape how you communicate within the community in the future?
Yeah, I think,
you know, I think the thing that we’ve learned and I think we all know this that,
you know, you really have to get that message out across multiple medium.
And, you know, I think I think we’ve come to I think the easy button is,
you know, put it on social media,
put it on your website and that’s good enough.
Well, the reality is it isn’t,
you know, you’ve got a number of particularly our older population that that that may not access those things.
And so where are they getting that information?
So, you know, for us, then sometimes it’s it’s thinking about,
well, what’s some of the kind of the old school ways that we used to get messages out?
Well,
Dick Coe on the cable channel used to be a way we would do that.
You know, we’re using less and less print media,
but we got to go back,
you know, to print media.
I think it’s only been recently,
you know, we’ve reached out to churches and in a more active way to say,
hey, you’ve got a significant part of that population in your congregation.
How how do we use use you for that message?
And so I think the the medium for carrying the message has never been clear that,
you know, it’s good.
You look at it from multiple ways and who all your stakeholders are.
So I would say that that that’s one.
You know, I come back to and I think I think I hope that we’re this way and I hope the community sees us this way is is transparency to just say,
listen, whether whether you like this or not,
you know, here’s what we know.
It’s not with some spin.
Here’s here’s what we know.
And that I think you can never do that enough.
And so I think the frequency of messaging was was another thing.
Now, the downside in the midst of a pandemic when the science and the messaging is constantly changing.
I think it gave us some pause to what I just said to say, well,
knowing that how frequently really should you be communicating?
You know, would you be better to send one message out a week with the most current updates versus again,
you get that fatigue media fatigue from well,
the CDC changed their mind yesterday.
You get a new message today.
They change their mind again on Friday.
So at some point from something that’s newsworthy,
that’s not reliable.
So at some point I just stop.
And I think that’s another thing that we’ve learned is that,
you know, the timing of that there is an overcommunication fatigue,
I think, especially when that message is just changing slightly.
And I think as much as we have this desire and we need to for the sake of the community to be transparent,
it’s this balance with,
okay, you know, how many times am I going to tell you the same message,
but with the slight twist and then when do I lose you?
And so I think that’s it’s been a challenge.
Well, Jason, from the church perspective,
we have very much appreciate, you know,
we’re small town enough.
And I don’t know to what extent this happens in urban areas,
but I know here to have access to be able to have conversation with you or some of the staff there about making decisions about can we have people back in the sanctuary or
kids or ways we can be helpful in regard to getting things to people.
And we have found the hospital very much a partner in that larger collaboration.
And I know that I’ve experienced just some tiny percentage of that in terms of what’s been going on in other directions.
And so you sit in an interesting place in that on one hand,
you are CEO of a particular organization,
but because of the term community,
there are those those pipelines as well.
And what’s it been like to kind of manage that again with people bringing different concerns,
different agendas, different ideas,
you must have been doing a ton of that over the last year,
I would assume.
Yeah,
you know, it’s it’s been interesting.
And it’s it’s always,
you know, I have to caveat every one of those conversations, because I’m not,
I don’t have any authority to ask anybody to do anything,
other than, you know, they’ll call and ask my opinion.
And,
and I’ll share it in just that way to say,
you know, here’s some things to think about.
But, you know, you have to make decisions in terms of what’s best for your organization,
knowing here are the facts.
I mean, you know, even in my own church.
You know, I had gotten a call from the president of the congregation,
and his question was,
you know, should we open church or should we not?
And I said,
I am absolutely I said,
let’s I’ll walk you through that.
And I said, that’s, that’s for you.
That’s not for me.
I said, I, you know, I can tell you what I think.
And I can tell you what the facts are,
as I know them.
But you have to decide that.
And it’s a hard thing.
And it’s been a hard thing throughout the pandemic.
I’ll give you a really good recent example.
So I get we had gotten a phone call from a reporter asking,
you know, what our opinion about having a Winter Games type festival in the middle of the pandemic?
What was our opinion about that?
Well, so,
again, we have an opinion,
but we’re a community based organization.
So so our opinion was that, you know,
obviously, given where the pandemic is,
we wouldn’t be in a position to encourage,
you know, mass gatherings of people.
On the other hand,
again,
part of the community,
we know that we have a number of businesses that are suffering because of this whole thing.
And we also know that we have a chamber that’s very thoughtful and saying,
hey, we’re, you know, we’re going to do all we can.
We think we need to do this because part of our mission is to support local businesses.
And we’re going to do the best we can under those circumstances to ask people of social distance and wear masks and other things.
And that’s that’s the balance that that you walk in that being in a smaller community or otherwise is to say, listen,
yes,
here’s my professional thoughts about it.
Here wearing my community hat.
I get it.
We have small businesses that are suffering because of what’s going on.
So we need to,
you know, we need to find that balance.
And it isn’t for me to say,
you know, do this or don’t do that.
You know, which I which I’m thankful for on the one hand that right,
you know,
that that I don’t have the authority necessarily to say.
But on the other hand,
we had to just talk through it.
You know,
well, from a church perspective,
I just I want to say how deeply we have appreciated access to those thoughts and and opinions.
Because so much of this is kind of lives over my head.
And so to be able to call and have those conversations with someone and say,
here’s what we’re thinking about.
Are we looking at the right numbers?
Are we evaluating?
Is there something we’re not taking into account?
You know, to be able to have some of those very important conversations with people who bring a little bit more to the table than a personal opinion has been really helpful.
And I don’t know to what extent that exists in larger communities,
but I think it’s part of what makes rural Iowa such a connected place and has been really helpful.
Yeah, no, I agree.
And we’ve we’ve appreciated that too.
And I’ve had many of those phone calls with many people.
And, you know, again, we’re happy to to share an opinion about it and understanding,
I think that, you know, everybody’s needs are different.
Everybody’s circumstances are different.
And and,
you know, we need to do the best we can to protect vulnerable populations in our community.
And at the same time,
life needs to go on.
And so I think it’s it’s trying to find that balance.
And, you know,
what you think that is is entirely what you think it is.
Right.
And so, you know,
that that becomes kind of the challenging conversation.
Jason, that’s really interesting because the the point where those things live in tension is is the difficult nexus right now.
We seem to societally have a hard time dealing with these grays and the nuance within it.
And as a leader who deals with doctors and nurses and also people who are thinking technology and thinking,
I’ve got to think within your organization.
There’s got to be a lot of diversities of thinking and a lot of different holdings of that tension,
even internally, yet alone in the community with all the different hats that are worn.
I’m wondering, as a leader,
have there been some practices or tools you found helpful in helping create those conversations to live in that nuance?
Yeah, I think,
you know,
and not that it’s easy,
but but again, we’re a science based organization and typically of the people that that work in health care,
they’re all sort of evidence based.
It’s like I’m I’m inquisitive.
I’m going to ask questions.
But at the end of the day,
prove it to me.
So I think oftentimes it’s easier and in COVID has been different than this is to say,
here’s the body of science that says we should do this versus,
you know, your opinion about this is fine,
but show me the body of science that supports your opinion.
So I think I think it’s a little easier for us to say,
there’s evidence.
This isn’t my feeling about it.
There’s evidence that says this.
Well,
I think when you have something that’s evolving like COVID,
the evidence changes.
And so I think that becomes challenging.
So to your point,
obviously within my organization, our organization,
we do have and remain some differences of opinion on certain things.
This vaccine is a good example.
I think there’s a feeling in spite of,
I think, compelling evidence that the vaccine is largely safe.
But whether you believe that body of science or not,
you know, the vaccines been around for nine,
you know, four months,
or, you know, it’s been in the pipeline under emergency use authorization.
And do I feel good about that?
You know, do I feel like,
hey, I’m willing to get the vaccine,
maybe not fully knowing what does that mean for me 10 years down the road?
So I think there’s,
I think in spite of the fact of everything I said about being science-based and I believe what I just said,
do I understand the fear in that?
Do I understand the decision-making from one of our staff people that said,
you know what, I’m just not comfortable getting the vaccine.
And it’s for the reasons I’ve said.
Okay.
I, you know,
so I think there is some grace in that and I think there just needs to be some understanding.
Because I would tell you that if the science,
I think if that concern didn’t exist,
then you’d see a whole bunch of mandates about,
you know, you’re going to get the vaccine because,
you know,
I think nobody knows that.
And so,
you know, I’ll just share a story with you about,
I had this conversation with my daughter,
so my daughter’s 20-ish.
And so she had a number of friends that wanted to know should they get the vaccine or not get the vaccine.
And so there’s, I think, varying stories out there about particularly females of childbearing age,
but perhaps males as well.
And again, you can see stories on both sides of that.
So my daughter says, hey,
you know, if you were going to recommend to these girls,
you know, should they get the vaccine or not?
What do you think?
So again, and this is not an atypical situation for me in terms of trying to give guidance.
So I said to the girls,
I said, hey,
I said,
you know, a couple of things.
I said,
I understand.
I said,
I believe,
based on the science that exists,
that the vaccine is probably fine for you.
Probably fine for you.
I said,
so,
but you have some concern about that because the vaccine hasn’t been around for so long.
So I said, so let’s suppose you don’t get the vaccine,
said what’s going to happen?
Well, in their particular case,
each of them had had COVID prior.
Each of them, not surprisingly,
had a very mild reaction to the virus and probably would continue to.
Your risk in not getting the vaccine,
let’s just assume that it’s safe for sake of our discussion,
is I might get COVID again.
I’ll have to miss two weeks class and it’ll probably be mild because that’s been my experience before.
So that’s one side of the decision making.
The other side of the decision making is this sort of uneasy feeling that you have that there’s not enough experience with the vaccine that I’m not sure I’m willing to get it.
Not being completely comfortable of what does that mean five years down the road.
So if I were you,
I said, those would be the decision points.
And so I said,
I can’t make that decision for you, but I said,
you get the choice in that.
Now, I said, having said that,
I have a younger sister who has a number of chronic illnesses.
She has cerebral palsy,
she’s had farmer’s lung,
amidst other things.
And she would be in her 40s.
Now, does that conversation look different when she and I have that conversation?
It absolutely does.
But I think at the end of the day,
and this is where we get to this kind of who’s team are you on sort of thing.
I think like a lot of things,
we all have to make decisions based on where we’re at.
What’s my circumstance?
What, you know, what draws me to,
you know, so in my particular case,
I’ve gotten the vaccine.
I’m otherwise healthy, but I’m 50 years old and I work in a healthcare setting.
And if there’s some downstream risk, maybe there is,
I’m willing to accept that because I think it’s important.
But I think, you know, we all have to do that based on where we are.
And for us to judge each other based on those decisions is really unfortunate.
Now, again, we should make informed decisions and those sorts of things.
But I mean, it’s just it’s continued to,
you know, it’s like politics in the country is,
you know, it’s just completely polarizing.
And so, societally, that’s what we choose to do oftentimes is, you know,
pick a side.
There’s no middle,
you know, it’s,
you know, either you’re on my team or you’re not on my team.
So along those lines,
Jason, we live in this amazing era where communication has in some ways never been easier.
I mean, let’s not say communication,
dissemination,
you know, because it doesn’t always make for communication.
But information is more accessible than arguably it’s ever been.
But what that also means is that misinformation is more accessible than it’s ever been.
As a person who lives in the pipeline that works very hard to put educated people in positions to get data,
to do research,
to make decisions.
And largely while questioning those processes also lives by them.
What has been the experience of I mean,
because I think one of the things we’ve all experienced is you just sit in front of the computer and here’s an article why the CDC is right.
And then here’s an article why my uncle,
the pediatrician, knows that it’s wrong.
And we all bring that.
And most of us,
while being woefully unqualified to really understand what we’re talking about,
seem to confidently do it anyway.
And so,
not from a philosophical standpoint,
but from a practical standpoint,
how has your organization and how have you tried to manage getting the right numbers,
the right implications,
the right conclusions,
and pushing back respectfully but firmly against some of the other stuff that has come to us all.
Does that make sense?
Yes, it does.
And I think from the beginning, and again,
I think people can criticize this because it’s not like they’re all knowing.
But as you think about kind of the world health structure,
so you’ve got the World Health Organization on a global perspective,
you’ve got the CDC from the United States perspective,
you’ve got the Iowa Department of Public Health from Iowa’s perspective.
And typically speaking, with some minor nuances,
that’s how that flows.
And so,
you know, we always talk about,
but maybe a little less so now,
kind of what our true north will be,
what’s our source of truth.
And so I think with very few exceptions,
we’ve gone back to right, wrong, or otherwise,
this is what the CDC says.
This is what the Iowa Department of Public Health says.
Both,
arguably,
very science-based organizations.
And so, you know, we’ve driven our source of truth from those organizations.
And so, you know, oftentimes, we would go back and say,
you know, because somebody would say,
“Well, so where’d you get that information?”
“Well, here’s where we got it.”
And I think to your point about,
you know, the availability of information,
I think the thing that gets scary,
and you said this,
and I had somebody from the community bring me up,
they wanted me to read.
Well, so I looked through the study,
and in the footnotes of the study,
it said, “10 physicians commented.”
I said,
“First of all, this isn’t an evidence,
you know, this isn’t a double-blinded,
pure scientific study.
This is the opinion of 10 physicians versus how many physicians in the world.” I said,
“So, but there was a ton of that out there.”
Or, you know, “What becomes my opinion versus what is the evidence support?”
And I think that’s what, you know,
social media has done,
that’s what, you know, news channels have done.
We’re less about the news,
and we’re more about my version of the news,
which I think is really sad.
I don’t watch much national news anymore because I can hardly stomach it.
It’s like, just tell me what happened.
Don’t tell me your version of what happened.
Just tell me what happened.
I also think it instills a kind of false confidence because I am forming an opinion on these things that I very likely don’t understand,
right?
I don’t know what it is to do a double-blind research study on a vaccine,
or to have three of the top epidemiologists in the world disagree about what a piece of a virus means.
That’s a different universe from the one in which I live,
but that watered down thing I read on social media gives me the idea that I understand it.
And here’s my version of it.
This is now true for me,
and it’s fascinating that I think I see that happening repeatedly,
and I’m thinking for people that try to stay in the trench of let’s deal with real facts,
let’s deal with real science,
and to have that noise on the sides.
It’s got to be an interesting experience.
It is.
And I think on the positive note,
I think patients are very much more inquisitive.
They try to be much more informed.
They ask a lot more questions.
I’ve taken a lot more community questions in the last year than probably in my entire career.
Part of that is prompting some of that interest and creating some of those questions,
which I think can be good.
Typically, my general response is,
“Tell me the source of your information.”
That’s usually where we start,
and we can kind of work back from there.
It’s really interesting, too, that you use that language of it’s hard to stomach,
because I think for many people,
2020 has been hard to stomach.
In just a sense in which it is hard to make the choices that we make now daily,
the amount,
the sheer amount of change personally,
civically,
that is just hard to be a human in.
It’s hard to lead in that.
It’s hard to be a person in that.
I’m curious, as you reflect on your own personal journey in that,
Jason, what has been hard for you to stomach in 2020?
What’s been the challenge for you?
The divisiveness in everything.
It’s the lack of unity in everything.
That’s been true.
We talked about that in COVID.
You pick a team,
you’re either pro-COVID or you’re anti-COVID,
or you believe this or you don’t believe this.
Again,
we had a national election this year,
and it’s no more apparent than politics at a national level.
I think that divisiveness,
and I think the unfortunate thing about social media is it’s allowed us all to be much more inhumane,
I’m going to say.
Much less respectful.
I would say something to you on social media because I feel like that provides me some anonymity.
I would never say that to your face.
Or we would sit down and have a conversation.
Here’s my opinion, accept it or don’t accept it.
We have a conversation.
I think 2020 in my mind,
again, I think politically we had been there,
but I think 2020 has just amplified that to the point where instead of trying to seek unity on whatever it is or being open to others’ opinions or listening,
again,
going back to the vaccine,
whatever your decision about vaccine is for you,
assuming you were fully informed,
good for you and I’d want to support that.
I want to judge you because you didn’t get it.
I don’t know your circumstance,
so maybe that makes sense for you.
I think there’s less,
and this is good Northwest Iowa stuff in my mind.
We’re neighbors and we help our neighbors and we disagree,
but we can talk and we’re seeing less and less of that.
I think part of that is we’ve all been isolated,
so we haven’t been able to congregate in church.
We haven’t been able to congregate anywhere.
What am I left with?
Well, I’m left with social media that certainly doesn’t lend itself to a discussion,
lends itself to here’s my opinion and like it or not.
I think it’s that the amplification of the divisiveness,
and part of that just is we’ve been isolated from each other.
I’d never say something as terrible as I posted on social media to you if we were sitting here having a conversation.
We just don’t do that,
but we seem to have gotten really comfortable doing it.
And again, part of that is because we haven’t been together.
I think for churches more than anything else,
trying to get that right of we need to be together,
the strength of the church is being together.
We also have a lot of people in our congregation,
typically the people that show up to church often,
that we may put in harm’s way.
And is that okay?
I felt the most difficulty for churches in this than any other organization because I’m socially isolated,
so I would certainly benefit from being at church.
I’m socially isolated is because I don’t want to be exposed to the virus.
So you’ve got this unwinnable situation.
So it’s just it’s tough,
and it’s tough to get it right for people.
But I think at the end of the day,
I think what I think it’s a beautiful part about living here is people have to make decisions that make sense for them.
I think what we’ve lost is we don’t respect that.
You know, I need to know why.
Or again, I picked a team and since your decision is not consistent with my team,
you know, I’m going to judge you instead of having a conversation to try to understand.
And I think it’s been this perfect storm of,
you know,
why are we doing those things?
And as humans, we need to be together.
And so I think that,
you know, we’ve made what was I think we’ve made sort of a bad situation worse in terms of,
again, lack of unity around things.
I think those are good insights,
Jason.
A lot of that feels true.
To end on kind of a positive note,
you know, nothing is all good or all bad.
So as you look back over your experience both personally and professionally,
what do you what did 2020 teach you?
What have you what have you learned?
What do you take out of this as a kind of a new strength,
a new lesson?
What good do you bring forward with you out of this or would you like to?
I think like a lot of things,
you know, there are good things and bad things that that come out of in.
Let’s focus on the good things from from your question.
So, you know, I think clearly because of this isolation piece,
I think there have been some old values,
you know,
family is important.
Spending time with your family is important.
How much time should you spend at work versus how much time you should spend at home with your family?
I think I think appreciation for the outdoors,
I think, has changed during the pandemic,
right?
So we can’t congregate with people.
So what do we do?
Well, we go outside,
you know,
we take a walk.
We appreciate nature.
We buy a bicycle.
We go for a run.
We, you know,
maybe I take up fishing.
And so I think that there’s been these things that that have happened.
I think that that I think will be good for people.
I think for our overall mental health,
I think having had our parents in isolation,
certainly for a lot of us have made us appreciate them more.
And so is that going to look different for me going forward?
I think that it will.
And, you know, so I really do think that there’s some good things that that have come out of it.
There’s certainly some bad things that have come out of it.
You know, I think, you know, if I have to do another zoom meeting,
you know, it’s just like,
again, it’s so impersonal.
It’s the importance of it, you know,
but I think I think that will change.
I think we’ll see life in in terms of zoom meetings.
You know, I think we’ll see a lot of people working from home.
I see that.
That’s a good news,
bad news thing from from where I sit.
But, you know, I think I think we’ll see more of that.
I think we’ll get back to it.
You know, we’ve been in isolation for so long.
You know, I think about it like barn raising back in the day,
you know, the neighbors get together and help neighbors out.
Well,
I think we’ll get back to that because I think that’s what people want.
Right. And I think that will start to eliminate some of the divisiveness because, again,
we’re forced to have a conversation now.
It’s not me just,
you know, telling you what my opinion is.
So I think those are all be good things professionally for me.
Lots of learning.
I don’t.
I always thought of myself as being humble and having humility and.
Yeah, I’m not sure that was true.
I think it’s more true today.
I mean, I you know, I think of, you know, how is it, you know, how important is it to be right versus how important is it to understand and be willing to say.
Yeah, you know, I was wrong or even if you had no control over the fact that you were wrong.
So, you know, I think that that the, you know, communications,
you know, I think certainly have learned a lot about,
you know, how I would communicate differently.
You know, I think involving people,
again, which has been important to me as a leader,
I think is in respect more than anything.
It’s not respect for authority.
It’s not respect for the process.
It’s about respect for each other.
And it’s not this social media version of,
you know, it’s about,
hey, you know what,
you didn’t make the decision I’d make.
I don’t hate you because we don’t agree.
And that’s where we’ve been.
And so I think,
I think for us to get back to is okay.
You know, it’s okay that you and I don’t see this the same way.
And I think we will.
So I think there are some real positive things that
That’s a version we’ve asked this question to several people and it’s largely some version of what I think I hear and what you’re saying is that,
yes,
we all miss some of the stuff we used to do.
But ultimately,
we miss the character of relationships that has been strained during these times of being apart.
And, you know,
we’re fortunate in that that I think comes natural to this area.
I think you’re exactly right.
That’s kind of our bent.
We want to do that.
We want to run into people at the diner and the store.
We want to, you know, hear how their lives are and help them if we can.
And I think we all look forward to being back to that.
Well, Jason,
we are grateful for what you’re doing.
We’re grateful for the way you’re doing it and
the impact that you and your organization have on the community.
And really thankful that you give us some of your time today.
This has been helpful.
I think that people will benefit from it.
And we’re grateful that you spend this time with us.
You’re very welcome.
Thanks for having me.