(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse".

Coming up later in the show, we'll learn how wild rice is harvested at the White Earth Indian Reservation.

But first joining me now is our guest, Sanford Health vice-president and medical officer, Dr. Doug Griffin.

Dr. Griffin, thanks for joining us today.

- Happy to be here.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- I'm a physician, I'm a family physician by training.

Was in practice full-time for almost 30 years.

I've been doing primarily administrative work here at Sanford for the last five years.

A little bit of clinical work.

Originally from the Twin Cities but as we talked earlier, I married a Morehead gal who has kept me connected to this area for many years.

- Yeah, well it's usually a reason sometimes for where we end up, but we're here today to talk about COVID and specifically the vaccine.

And especially the rollout of the vaccine, obviously.

Can you tell us how that's going?

- Yeah, I think from our standpoint, first of all the process of us receiving the vaccine and getting it ready and giving it is going very well.

We would certainly like, as I think many people on the air would absolutely welcome more vaccine supply to us, but it's gone very, very well to date.

- Who's been given the vaccine so far?

Basically, been it's employees, we've been starting with those at the closest to the front line, taking care of COVID patients, those most critical in need and basically it's kind of backed away.

Almost all of our employees do have some either indirect or potentially direct contact with patients.

So, that's why they're all getting the vaccine.

- Yeah, and to your knowledge so far, have there been any adverse reactions to the vaccine?

- You know, throughout our system, we have had just a little bit more than a handful of reactions that have been enough to report to the vaccine event recording system.

None have been serious or life-threatening sorts of things.

Plenty of people have had, just like when we give other immunizations, sore arms, some achiness, some low grade fevers and things like that.

Generally have been self-limited, gone in one to two days.

- And based on what you know, when is more the general public gonna start getting the vaccine?

- That's a good question.

We will begin vaccinating the of the high risk patients starting tomorrow.

With very limited supply that will expand a little bit next week.

We're still waiting to see, us as the state, to see how quickly our allocations ramp up.

But for now, it'll just be very high-risk individuals as defined by the state of North Dakota.

Over age 75, multiple comorbid conditions and things, so.

- As far as the rollout, do we know how many more, I guess, how many more numbers we'll have come in to the state for the vaccine?

- All I can tell you, I believe the state, this is not for the state not making every effort to find out from them as well.

But I believe the state will get about 10,000 vaccines early next week, total doses between Pfizer and Moderna.

I think we've been allotted about 1,300 of those vaccines.

A little bit less than we initially had anticipated and really they haven't been getting much advance warning.

They know they're gonna get some but the absolute numbers seem to be not coming with a lot of foremention for them to plan.

They're eager to do that.

So, I think this is still evolving and I think with some of the announcements yesterday about release of other vaccines, I think that will change.

But right now it's kind of week-to-week.

- Why does a vaccine rollout take so long?

- Well, this is an immense, immense produ act to basically vaccinate the entire United States.

So, huge number of people to do in a very logistically complex.

And several other factors have played into there as well too.

Both of the vaccines out, particularly the Pfizer, a very good, as you might say, delicate vaccine requires this ultra cold storage and including during transport.

So, that makes it more challenging.

And we certainly don't want to waste any vaccine.

- Is being vaccinated a requirement in order to work at Sanford?

- That's a good question.

It currently is not a requirement for a vaccine at this point in time to work at Sanford.

We highly highly encourage it but it's not a requirement at this point.

- Okay, have you been vaccinated yet?

- [Dr. Griffin] I have, yes.

- So, how did it feel and how did it go?

- You know, a sore arm.

That's basically the only side effect, I've had my two doses, the second one last week and just a sore arm, maybe low grade achiness, 24 hours it was gone.

- So, you compare it to shingles or flu shot at all?

- I can compare it to both.

So, I've had both those, flu vaccine, I think my arm was a little bit more sore than when I get the flu vaccine.

Add the current shingles vaccine which is a two dose one and I actually had pretty bad rigors and chills after my second dose.

So, this was better than getting my shingles vaccine.

- Okay, well you mentioned Pfizer but can you talk about probably the historical speed of which Pfizer and Moderna have conducted their trials and getting the manufacturing, getting it manufactured and out?

- Yeah, this is really unprecedented and a common question which I think we can reassure people and say, "Well, gee."

Meaning that it happened very quickly, does that mean that corners were cut and then potentially this is not safe?

I don't think that is the case.

First of all, many things contributed to developing very quickly.

First of all, we had an entire industry basically focused across the world on getting this vaccine out.

So, many, many companies across the country beginning this process and beginning in many different manufacturing styles.

Both of these vaccines are messenger RNA, developed vaccines, kind of a newer to the vaccine world.

The other thing that happened, there was some overlap at times in the phases of the trials.

Sometimes phase one and two kind of overlap with each other or two and three, that contributed to it.

And the other thing which I think the government helped or funding helped is typically a manufacturer would wait to begin the mass production of their vaccine until after they were all the way through the trials.

In this case, the manufacturing began with the hopes that this would be a safe vaccine to do, so as soon as the authorization emergency use authorization, they could literally within the next day or two start sending out vials of vaccine.

That was obviously very, I mean somebody had to take the financial risk, the government did to do that, but those are several of the factors that brought it quickly, much quicker than any other vaccine has been brought forward.

- The two we've mentioned, are there others out there that are gonna have vaccines available soon?

- Yeah, I don't know if the word defined soon.

I think there'll be some that will be finishing up their phase three trials early in 2021, probably close to the end of the first quarter or early second quarter is my understanding.

- Do we know how long the vaccine will be effective?

- That's a good question.

Unknown at this point in time.

The people that were in the original trials continue to be followed as well but at this point in time, we don't know.

A common question people have, "Will I need to get another dose next year?"

And right now the answer is not known.

- So, it's not known.

And obviously there are new strains popping up, but how is that gonna affect?

- Yeah, my understanding based on some literature has just published this week is that of the new strains identified, the current vaccine seemed to be also effective in protection against those strains as well.

- And as people are getting the vaccine 'cause it's obviously happening right now.

Do they have to still wear a mask, social distance and do the things that we're supposed to be doing?

- Yeah, also a very good question.

Commonly, and our employees have asked that as well and the answer is yes, they should still follow those.

For a few reasons.

First of all, you don't reach the highest level of immunity until after your second dose.

And even then it's not 100% effective.

And until we get many many more people vaccinated where we're still I think gonna be in that space of needing to take the precautions that we currently are.

- So, what's Sanford's current hospital bed space and capacity level?

- Well, we're good, we're very busy today.

We've been very busy, but it's mostly busy with all the other things.

We have fewer than 20, I think in the mid teens hospitalized patients with COVID.

That's about 100 less than we had at our peak in mid November.

So, we're pleased with that.

Still, that disease is out there and some people still get very sick for it.

But our current busy-ness and capacity is basically all the other things that we care for.

- Are you confident or hopeful that North Dakota seeing COVID cases stabilize or maybe even decline in the past few weeks, will this continue?

- Yeah, I'm more on the hopeful side.

We're getting close to the end of the time when we might see a significant impact from the holidays.

The recent holidays, so there is that.

I think what remains to be seen a bit is, first of all, is how quickly we get the vaccine and vaccine rolled out.

And then if there is some effect with the new strain, originally identified in the United Kingdom which appears to be a bit more contagious.

So, could be a bit conservative work.

We're hopeful though that the worst is behind us, but my crystal ball is a little fuzzy far out.

- Yeah, the crystal ball's been that way for a while now.

Yeah, a term we hear often, I want you to help explain maybe for a lay person, what is herd immunity?

- Yeah, another one.

Now we're going back to my academic years.

But really, herd immunity is when enough people within a population have gained immunity either naturally by having the disease or acquired immunity via immunization.

Such that if that disease gets introduced in that population there'll be enough people immune that it really can't take hold and become an epidemic or a pandemic.

We think that number probably needs to be at least 70%.

- Do you feel that we're nearing herd immunity in this state, in this region, because now so many people have had it or is that an overstatement?

- I think that'd be a little bit of an overstatement.

Clearly we've had many people in North Dakota that have had it, but I think we're far from that percentage needed to reach herd immunity.

- Well, we talked about the crystal ball and now we're looking to talk a little bit about hindsight and not to beat up on anything, but can you talk about some of the things that could have been done differently?

Sort of in that COVID fight early on, maybe from a medical and political angle?

- Yeah, certainly I'll just talk to the medical angle.

We have learned a lot from the onset of patients to now and particularly from the care and treatment and things like that.

So, we certainly have advanced and learned.

We care for patients in the hospital now differently than we did initially to some extent there.

So, that learning, I'm not sure if there's any way to have sped that up there as well.

We've learned a lot about the prevention of it.

I think during one of the things in hindsight, after our first surge back in the spring, and then I think we kind of got lulled into things and maybe we could have done a little bit better at preventing a surge beginning.

No guarantees on that but perhaps if we had been more diligent with masking as a community.

I'm very proud of how the Fargo-Moorhead community has done.

I've been in other communities in other parts of the state and in Minnesota and I think our community should be very proud of how they're doing on that.

So, those are some of the things that we've learned.

We've learned quite a bit about testing I should say as well too.

So, I think if we had, in hindsight I think a more rigorous rollout or dedicated effort in the country towards ramping testing capacity up quicker would have been helpful as well.

- Here's a question I always kind of wondered, how many people in a rough percentage do you think in the last 10 months were walking around with COVID and didn't even know it, the asymptomatic people.

- Yeah, that's the thing, so the numbers vary depending on the time and the outbreak and such, but it could be as many as 40% of the people with COVID at any given time were without symptoms.

- Why is it, we know that it's severe for some, it's like the common cold or a flu for others and then as I said, some are asymptomatic, why is that?

- Yeah, we do know that there have been, we've pretty well been able to identify those people at the highest risk for severe outcomes.

So, sometimes people's underlying conditions made them more predisposed to a more severe thing.

The other thing has to do probably with how infected were they, this is the concept of viral load.

Did they get a big viral load or do they have more of a moderate viral load?

There could be that, and there are other things being researched now in publications coming out, fairly routinely, looking for other things that could be identified as a marker of why people would have different reactions to that.

Bottom line is we don't know entirely the answer to that but continuing to learn more all the time.

- Do you foresee the light at the end of the tunnel or are we seeing it now and I guess with that, when do you think that we will reach that level of affective herd immunity, I guess?

- Yeah, I think our opportunity for light at the end of the tunnel is the mass vaccination effort.

I think it's really that.

I think so a couple of things need to, we need to get more vaccine supply, more manufacturers approved will help 'cause that'll just be more people to produce the vaccine.

So, that'll really be the key.

I think that that's probably gonna be, we'll be vaccinating heavily well into spring and summer and perhaps beyond to do that.

So, I don't know when a could say things will be back to normal, but I think it's gonna be a few months yet.

- I heard reports out there and of course they vary.

But talking about only 60% of the people are gonna take it and that leaves 40% obviously.

And I've heard that that level may not be what's needed.

So, what would you say about something like that?

- Yeah, that concerns me a little bit.

We have the same concern.

We have not seen that hesitation in our employees and our staff.

Certainly not all have accepted it but I've been pleased.

We want to continue to vaccinate more and what I hear from messages from our patients and we're receiving many calls.

People are eager to get the vaccine get there.

So, I hope that that number is low.

I think the other thing, the longer, the more people have been vaccinated out there, the more people saying that it's generally been going well and tolerated is I think is a good sign and will encourage people to get it.

So, we're gonna continue strong efforts to encourage everybody that's offered the vaccine to get it.

- Well, if people are curious about when they can get a vaccine, is there a number they can call?

- Not quite yet.

You can certainly ask your caregiver 'cause we've been notifying them.

Right now the supplies are limited such that we in fact we've just began notifying our patients this week that when your time comes, when you're identified as in the population, we will notify you with instructions on how to get scheduled for the vaccine.

- So again, with everything going on and if people need more information just in general about COVID, where's the best place to go> - Yeah, I think there's a few spots.

Certainly could go to our website, sanfordhealth.org and we have a fax over fear and there's a portion there dedicated to vaccine.

Also, I think the CDC would be a very good spot to identify information.

I would encourage people to use those areas.

If you used another health system's site as well to get information, I think that would be fine.

There can be a lot of misinformation on vaccines.

So, I would encourage to use it from either from your health system provider, happy for it to be Sanford or the CDC certainly would be very good sources for information.

- Well, we're out of time but thank you very much for joining us today.

- Yeah, my pleasure.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Wild rice grown on the White Earth Reservation has sustained the people there for thousands of years.

Winona LaDuke, a ricer her entire life takes us through the process of harvesting wild rice and what it means to the people of White Earth.

(calming music) - [Winona] This month is called Manoominike Giizis or the Wild Rice Making Moon in Anishinaabemowin.

And it has just started.

The rice is here and we know it was coming because when the first maple leaves turn is when the rice is ready.

Aaniin, my name is Winona LaDuke.

(speaking Anishinaabemowin) I'm executive director of Honor the Earth and I'm a ricer.

So, we're at the Round Lake farm of the White Earth Recovery Project.

And we're parching rice.

We've been doing this for about 25 years here.

So, this starts when the rice comes up on the lake.

And non-Indian people, a lot of times have treated it poorly, thinking it's a lake weed.

But for us, it is mana.

The word Monoma itself refers to something the Manitous gave us.

It's a part of our migration story.

We were instructed to move to the place where the food grows upon the water.

(calming music) And so, this is where we were instructed to go by our creator.

Where there is rice there are Anishinaabe people and where there are Anishinaabe people, there are rice.

We have an entire world that is based on that.

Our people live in a world that is almost half water.

If you look at the Anishinaabe universe we're the Northern part of five American States and the Southern part of four Canadian provinces, and there's a lot of water.

The great lakes of course and then the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota, that's our Akiing, the land to which we belong and so in that we have this world that has a lot fish in it and a lot of rice.

And so, this time is something that for thousands of years we have looked forward to.

And so, right now across the north country there are Ojibwe people and non-Ojibwe people taking to lakes.

We go out there, put our prayers out and then go out with a canoe.

And a one person has a bawa'iganaak, or the knockers.

So, you bring it over and you knock it.

You gotta be kind of gentle, you don't whack it.

You gotta be gentle and the heads fall into the canoe.

The other person's pulls and pushes you through the rice beds because it's not deep water.

We go until we get good rice in our canoe or how tired you are.

But then you bring it to us here or to a parcher and we weigh it and then we lay it out to dry.

And then after it is dry we put it in a wood fire parcher.

Ronnie Chilton is parching here, he has for most of his life.

- My name's Ron Chilton.

I work for Honor the Earth.

I've been here quite a few years now and I have a crew of about six guys that do different jobs.

Today we are in the process of parching and thrashing and finishing rice.

It probably takes about three hours to cook a batch of rice of 300 pounds, two and a half, three hours.

We'll dump it into a cooling box and we'll hook it up to a fan.

And then we cool it off a little bit, so we can handle it and put it in the thrasher.

Purpose of that is to get the hull off and try and not break the seed up.

And then from there, it goes into another little box and we'll take it into the fanning mill.

And the fanning mill that just blows the hull out the back of the building and the seed into a bin.

Hopefully we get a lot of rice this year.

We are gonna do 20,000 I hope or 30,000 pounds.

I'm building a new thrasher and setting up another fanning mill to do the projects.

(calming music) - [Winona] It's really interesting.

The equipment is from a lot of different decades.

It's kind of like that Johnny Cash song, "One Piece At A Time".

So, you've got like a 1943 fanning mill.

It's all hand built equipment.

That's very custom built for this very specific purpose.

Just genius, mechanical geniuses.

A lot of these rural people.

People don't think about what mechanical genius it takes to figure out how to adapt equipment.

You know, my community is economically poor.

Just everything you don't want to happen is our community.

But what we got is rice.

And so if you got wild rice, you can make some bucks.

So, to us it is food for the belly and it is also food for the pocket.

It pays a lot of our bills and so, Native Harvest and Honor the Earth both sell rice.

We also parch for families.

A lot of families might rice and then they need their 100, 200 pounds parched.

We do that too.

(calming music) A lot of people eat rice.

It's centerpiece of our nutrition.

There's a reason that the Ojibwe people are so numerous and large.

And a lot of it has to do with wild rice.

When you go on and rice, you're happy, you're doing something your great, great, great, great greats did.

In the same lake.

In the same lake.

- Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funded by The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.