Rudy Fedrizzi Classification talk in 7 slides
Rudy’s paternal Italian grandparents emigrated in the 1920s from northern Italy, the Trentino, the Italian Dolomites; his mother’s family was Polish. He’s named after his grandfather’s friend, as was his father. About half Rudy’s family emigrated to the US and half stayed in Italy.
Arched Doorway — Entrance to Family Home
View of the Dolomites from the Family Home
Rudy was born in 1962 in Syracuse, NY; graduated from Liverpool High School in 1980. Each class had 900+ kids, a total of 3,600 students in the school.
Attended St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY where he met his wife, Heidi. Wen to medical school at Washington University in St. Louis – his first airplane ride was to that interview. OB-GYN Residency at Vanderbilt, Nashville, TN, where he learned a lot about country music and met a group of incredibly wholesome people, genuine. Once went to a picnic where Charlie Daniels got up on a picnic table and played The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
Married for 35 years to Dr. Heidi Rinehart, an OB-GYN at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene. She is a long-distance hiker. Three children: Julianna (27), Peter (24), and Ellie (15) in Keene in high school.
Career as OB-GYN: Joined Air Force after his residency; became chief of OB-GYN in Arizona for four years. Went to flight school to become a “back seat F-16 flight surgeon” at Luke AFB. Participated in mock dogfights when other fighter planes transited the US from west to east.
Rudy's Fighter Jet
He had practices in Taos, NM (women’s health practice named one of the five best by the World Health Organization in 2001) and then in Ithaca NY with his wife. He was a consulting GYN to Cornell.
When Ellie was about 4 years old, Heidi and Rudy decided to get out of their practice mode and find something else. He “stumbled” into Rotary when his daughter was a youth exchange student in 2008-9 in Poland and had a great experience. In 2009 when he moved to Keene, he joined the Elm City Club in 2010.
He co-developed some programs that Rotary picked up on: DeMar Kids Marathon. Kids accumulate 25 miles of activity over the summer, then run their last 2.5 miles in September finishing their “marathon” of miles. They decided to give every student in second grade (850 of them!) a pair of high end sneakers in May. They pay $10 for $70 sneakers through New Balance.
DeMar Kids Marathon
Rudy served as club president in 2015-16. He partnered with the other Keene Rotary Club to start a Rotaract Club that year.
Now into his 2nd career in Public Health. They wanted to find a place where one of them could practice clinically and other could do something else. Rudy started working with “Healthy Monadnock” to make Keene a healthy community by 2020. Worked for almost 9 years to make southwest NH healthier. Had $2M in grants at its height before it derailed after the merger of Cheshire into the D-H system in 2017-18. Rudy hung in until 2018. He did a TED-X talk in 2017.
Nov 2019, he met up Dr. David Satcher, former US Surgeon General, whom he knew from his medical school years. In April, 2019, Rudy became district director of public health in WRJ – he is one of 12 area directors. Only hassle is that he lives in an apartment in Lebanon 5 days a week and then goes to Keene for the weekends.
Rudy and Dr. David Satcher
QUESTIONS
Bruce: What are you doing besides COVID.
I have a staff of 11. Unlike NH, VT has a public health infrastructure – maternal, school, workplace, immunization WIC, emergency preparedness – a great place to work. We had just started a new breastfeeding coalition, a lot was going on before COVID; but today, I SPENT all day doing testing – we are all COVID all the time. It is felt that 80M children around the world are falling behind in their immunizations – including measles and polio – during this time. Need to message to families – at least get into your family care practices and get the kids immunized.
Tim: How many Gs?
The test I took to fly the F-16 was up to 9 Gs and you have to stay conscious for 10 seconds. Half of my class couldn’t do it.
I tell people the COVID test is unpleasant but it only lasts 10 seconds.
Paul: Future of COVID? Second wave?
At the beginning, we were overly cautious to prevent the health service from collapsing. Today, we are a bit more able to handle COVID like we handle other diseases. My guess is that there will be more cases as we begin to circulate with each other, but I think the health system is in a position to handle it. Right now, there is no one in a VT hospital with COVID. If we bumped up to 20-30/day, we could handle it. We still have no treatment or vaccine for it, so it will still be making us sick. Rudy is happy with what he is reading about the speed with which a vaccine might be available. Once the virus gets into senior facilities, it runs wild – 60% of cases in VT have been in senior living situations.
Marilyn: Compared to measles, contagion?
Measles is THE most contagious disease we know. COVID is not the same. If one person gets measles, 99 non-vaccinated people will get it; COVID it’s 1:5. It does seem that we are not getting COVID easily from touching surfaces. Masks seem to help contain droplets.
Ernst: How sensitive is the test you are doing at the Aquatic Center?
The current RT-PCR test has at least 95% sensitivity meaning that if 100 infected people were sampled the test would correctly identify at least 95 as positive (true positives), but up to 5 would be told they were negative (false negatives) while the test has at least 99% specificity meaning that of 100 people without the virus the test would correctly read negative for 99 of them (true negatives), but might tell one incorrectly that they were positive (a false positive). Some of the serology tests have as low as 71% sensitivity and until there are highly accurate versions and an better understanding of their interpretation regarding immune status the AMA has cautioned against their use to inform individuals here’s the link to an article explaining that position - https://www.cmadocs.org/newsroom/news/view/ArticleId/48890/AMA-cautions-about-limitations-of-antibody-testing-for-COVID-19-160
Only about half of Americans say they would be game to take the vaccine once it is licensed. This surprised us. A vaccine will probably go to 60+ age folks first. A few hundred children have acquired the rare inflammatory syndrome.