Gundersen doctor predicts “dark” winter in fight against COVID

Americans are being told by medical experts not to plan for a traditional Thanksgiving, to keep the coronavirus from spreading. 

Gundersen physician Todd Kowalski is one of those experts, and he’s not happy about downplaying the holiday.

“My traditional Thanksgiving is cramming 25 people in a room, as many around the table as we could get, and watching football,” said Kowalski.

But not in 2020: “That is not happening in my family this year…it’s not wise, and it’s not safe.”   

Dr. Kowalski says small group gatherings have helped to feed the large increase in COVID cases in the last month, and Thanksgiving dinners could cause hospital admissions to spike in the next two or three weeks.  

Gundersen had one COVID unit in La Crosse for the first six or seven months of the outbreak, but “we’ve opened a second COVID unit, and now are overflowing into a third,” said Kowalski.

However, he does believe that hospitals are better equipped to treat COVID now than they were six months ago, and he is optimistic that new vaccines will be widely available within a few weeks.