Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 23
Unfortunately, | wish it would be. | wish everybody would say you know what my New Year's resolution ahead of time
is I'm going to make the sacrifice to where the mask. It doesn't have to do about liberties or the Constitution. It has to
do with | want to protect and above my fellow citizens. | want to make sure that they're with me next year so that we
can party at a better time. That's all | can say but unfortunately not everybody raised probably think God the way |
look at think things.
Stephanie Wolf-Rosenblum, MD
This is Dr. Stephanie Wolf-Rosenblum. Thank you for our meeting and allowing me to speak. | failed to mention
before | reside at 47 Berkeley Street.
So in answer your question Alderman Lu, hospitalizations are up 12% and what the science of people becoming sick
with COVID is that they become sick and then after the first week is when they have an increase in complications and
death. So that's what we call a lagging indicator. So hospitalizations being up are likely to be followed by an increase
in deaths. That will put an additional strain on our hospitals. You've heard some information from Director Bagley
about the state in our hospitals. What | will tell you is I've had a personal conversation with the head of the
emergency department in one of the hospitals and what they said is that the reason people are being treated in the
waiting room and in the emergency room is because they're calling hospitals in other States. Ten different
possibilities and the answer they're getting is we're in the same boat you are. We're full. We can't help you.
Last year when COVID first surfaced and we didn't understand that we were going to have to live with this disease, we
shut things down. A lot of places, you Know, went into lockdown and businesses closed. That's not what we're
proposing here and we're not proposing anything that's permanent. What we're saying is that we are in crisis now and
that we know one of the ways to avoid the crisis of any one of us or our loved ones going to the hospital and dying
because the just isn't enough oxygen. There aren't enough respirators. There aren't enough doctors. There aren't
enough nurses. This is not theory. This is happening throughout the country and we don't want that to happen in
Nashua. If not everybody wears masks, and not every business enforces it, and people take heed to the fact that the
Board of Aldermen and the Board of Health have given this very serious consideration and are still recommending a
mask mandate, | sincerely believe and based on my discussions with people, | do believe we will have an increase.
Studies have shown that mask mandates do lead to an increase in use. It's not 100% but it can be enough to protect
us. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you.
Chuck Cappetta, MD
Thank you President Wilshire. The discussion that Alderman Lu brought up was about we’re in it perhaps, maybe
that's a strong word, we already passed what the minority might be thinking about, okay, and what | mean by that is a
medical school over 40 years ago, you know, were taught that the patient is always right. Listen to your patient.
They'll tell you what's wrong with them and things like that. So once you graduated from med school you start training
and | remember to and my first job was down here in Nashua that every interaction | went with, | went into the room. |
was afraid when | said something that seemed to be opposed to what that patient was thinking about. I’d say, oh my
god, I'm gonna lose them as a patient. They're not gonna like me. They’re going to spread the rumor that Dr. is blah,
blah, blah and | have sleepless nights. | said, what did | do wrong? What did | do wrong? You know and yet | could
put my head on my pillow at night and say everything | talked about with the families, and to this day, parents who had
me over the years | always say first and foremost, don't listen to anything | tell you.
I'm telling you facts and giving you my medical opinion on how we think your family member could be treated but do |
expect them to perhaps listen to everything | say. So in those early days, | want them to go home and go do this, go
do that, etc, etc. and when they came back when they | found out they hadn't followed the rules that | had set up as
the doctor, | kind of said, Wow, | must not be doing my job right. | learned over time as a seasoned veteran now that |
am evidenced by the top of my head and the hair color is that, you know, | still say what I've said before but | don't get
caught up in the background noise. | say that nicely because people's value systems, people's emotions, people's
situations are different. So in my consultation with the family, we're going to have our private conversation, we're
going to go set up a care plan but as long as | can see it as patient centered care that's based on true information
they’re giving to me, I'm going to do my best abilities give them the facts that they need. | feel like I've done my job
and that's kind of what we're asking you here to do is we're hearing everybody's opinion but in the case of the Board
of Health here, we're just providing in our best knowledge science based and all of us three are scientists, you know,
and that we're just saying, we're just offering information that we feel is strongly going to protect and defend
