COVID-19 showing up in New York City knocked Seattle off the front pages. Seattle’s outbreak was in some sense a curiosity until the virus attacked the home of national media outlets. Since then, New York has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the country both in numbers and in media coverage. The first cases recorded here in my mountain redoubt came via a visitor from New York City.
Seattle’s early outbreak made it a laboratory for testing remediation efforts such as social distancing. The acting president admitted Sunday night the practice should last at least until the end of April. Seeing images of body bags at Elmhurst Hospital in his native Queens and knowing a friend is in a coma there made the pandemic real enough for Donald Trump to back away from the April 12 reopening date he promoted a week earlier.
Meanwhile, Seattle is seeing results from its containment strategy, the New York Times reports:
Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.
While each infected person was spreading the virus to an average of 2.7 other people earlier in March, that number appears to have dropped, with one projection suggesting that it was now down to 1.4.
As disruptive to daily life as the restrictions are, they seem to have slowed transmission. Gov. Jay Inslee told reporters the state is not “within 1,000 miles of declaring victory.” Recent testing reveals new cases in rural areas. Restrictions should stay in place to prevent a rapid resurgence of the outbreak. Washington state officials began asking citizens to keep their distance from one another at the end of February. A month later, that strategy seems to be paying off.
Such evidence seems finally to have impressed Trump enough to make him back away from rosier predictions of seeing packed churches by Easter.
The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker adds:
Trump said he was convinced by data modeling presented to him by two physicians advising him on the pandemic — Anthony S. Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator — that the death rate in this country probably will not peak for another two weeks.
In his press conference on Sunday, Trump cited the March 16 worst-case death estimate of 2.2 million from the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. if nothing was done to mitigate the virus’ spread.
“The prospect of 2 million deaths seemed to stick with Trump,” Rucker observes, “because he repeated the statistic 16 times at Sunday’s news conference.” It suggests Trump is laying the groundwork for declaring his lackluster response a glorious victory should the final death tally be less.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Sunday told CNN’s Jake Tapper the pandemic could result in 100,000 to 200,000 U.S. deaths.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.