![](https://d32w6oxfkucqe7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Miitch-Haniger.jpg)
Despite a smart, coherent, calm presentation Wednesday morning by Gov. Jay Inslee, executives of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan that was unique in civic history, my guess is there’s still some skepticism about the drastic measures ordered to mitigate (not contain) COVID-19, the disease produced by novel coronavirus.
Those measures in the Seattle sports world mean the Mariners’ opening series likely won’t be played in Seattle (under consideration are the spring training facility in Peoria, AZ, as well as in Texas and Minnesota).
The XFL Seattle Dragons will play their game Saturday with no fans in attendance at the Clink. Nor will fans be allowed in for the junior hockey games of the Seattle T-Birds in Kent and the Everett Silvertips. The Sounders have postponed their March 21 game, the next one at home. The Huskies women’s softball games, and all other spring sports, will be played at the University of Washington in front of crowds consisting only of family and recruits.
In Spokane, and in all other cities hosting early rounds of the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, the games will go on without fans.
The reason for banning gatherings larger than 250 people in Washington’s three most affected counties was explained succinctly by King County Executive Dow Constantine.
“Temporarily banning social and recreational gatherings that bring people together will help ensure that health crisis does not become a humanitarian disaster by working to preserve the limited capacity of the county’s health care system,” he said. “This is the core critical challenge: To delay the spread of disease to reduce the peak number of people infected, in order not to exceed the capacity of the system.”
To amplify that point beyond the politcians’ presentation, I want to share an astonishing story this week in The Atlantic headlined, “Iran has far more coronavirus cases than it is letting on.”
According to staff writer Graeme Wood, the conservative theocracy that governs the country attempted in February to diminish news of the national spread by claiming that that the U.S. had hyped COVID-19 to suppress voter turnout in the nation’s sham elections of only government-approved candidates. Tehran vowed to punish anyone spreading rumors about a serious epidemic.
Unaware that the outbreak had already begun, 43 percent of Iranians voted. Instead of quick action that could have allowed quarantines to be put in place before the election, Iran greased its own path toward the most catastrophic outbreak in modern history, Wood wrote.
By March 3, 23 out of 290 members of parliament were infected, a rate of about 7.9 percent. The rate of infection of parliamentarians, if applied to Iran’s total population, would come to 6.4 million cases. As of March 8, the government acknowledged only 6,566 cases, the first one reported Feb. 19.
Behind China and South Korea, Iran globally is third in reported cases, just ahead of Italy. The disease has already killed two in the parliament and four others in senior leadership positions, roughly equivalent to U.S. Cabinet members. Iranians reportedly are fleeing the bigger cities for smaller ones, thereby spreading the disease.
Health care professionals are overwhelmed, furious that the government was neither honest nor pro-active. Wrote Wood:
The situation the doctors describe is desperate, with nurses wrapping themselves in tablecloths because they have long since run through their supply of proper gear. They swear that the official numbers are wrong. “Just stay overnight in the hospital to find out what I’m talking about,” one wrote. Or if you want to live, go home, and don’t come out until the plague passes. “(Our) society now needs fear more than hope.”
That is the sort of imminent humanitarian disaster to which Constantine referred, and seeks to prevent by being more ahead than behind.
During the hour-long presser, Inslee offered up a text message from a woman in Italy that conveyed in blunt terms the same message out of Iran.
“Some people continue to believe that this is some kind of minor problem, and that there’s an overreaction to this, that this is just kind of flu again,” he said, then read from the text:
Stop saying, it’s just flu or severe flu. Please come and see our intensive care units in northern Italy. People can’t breathe and we don’t have anywhere to put them. You (fucking) idiots.
Said Inslee: “We have listened to science. We’ve got to look at what’s happening here and we got to act. We are going to have to change our lives in ways that are uncomfortable, if we’re going to succeed as a community.”
Another speaker, Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, Health Officer for Public Health / Seattle & King County, offered the starkest analogy to what the World Health Organization described Wednesday — for the first time since the story made news out of China — as a pandemic.
“This large-scale outbreak will go on for weeks and likely for months,” he said. “We expect this will be a very difficult time. It’s similar to what you might think of as an infectious-disease equivalent of a major earthquake that’s going to shake us for weeks and weeks.”
Added Durkan: “I truly believe that this outbreak may be one of the most transformative and consequential events that we’ve had in this region and in this country.”
Epidemiologists like to use the term “flattening the curve,” referring to graph marking incident rates over time that is generally a bell curve with flatter tails at the beginning and and end. The avoidance of disaster increases if the curve is flattened. That’s the goal.
A part of the solution is a crowd cap at 250, the theory being that beyond that, chances are small that “social distancing,” keeping six to eight feet of space between people, becomes impossible to achieve.
“What we don’t want is shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar,” Inslee said. A chart at the press conference showed lines on a graph that indicated the rate of incidents that forecasts 25,000 cases in early April if no action were taken.
“That curve unfortunately continues to go up so that it probably continues to double every week or so,” he said. “By mid-May, we can be looking at over 60,000 people infected, with the consequence of fatalities. This is something we need to act on.
“This is an extremely dangerous event that we are facing. but we are not helpless. We have the ability to seize our own destiny and the safety of our loved ones, by acting to do what is necessary and effective in reducing the rate of the spread.
“There is no magic silver bullet at the moment medically. But there is a very successful effort that we can take to slow the spread of this disease. That’s to reduce the social interactions that are not necessary in our lives. This is an effective tactic. It is at hand. All that is required is the will of active people to follow science, and the confidence that we’re all in this together.”
As unsettling as is the the idea for many fans, sports are not necessary in our lives.
“I had a discussion with (Mariners owner) John Stanton the other day,” Inslee said. “Missing a home opener is a big, big deal to the state of Washington. But I think he and others understand the importance of health. I think we’re going to have acceptance of this.”
Withdrawal from our norms is the only rational choice. There is a legitimate question as to whether the action is in time, and sufficient. What is knowable is that in the area of the nation hit hardest first, Seattle has has responded first.
To do it best, as Inslee said, we have to recognize we’re all in it together. Or we go the way of Iran.
25 Comments
dont the mariners paly at home to empty stadiums any way /
Over 22,000 a game in an awful year.
Particularly unfunny today.
“Stay calm. It will go away.” (President David Dennison)….This is the man who said to rake the forests, nuke a hurricane, water bomb an 800 year old cathedral and put a person who doesn’t believe in science in charge of the virus response.
Yep. And he kicked the Queen of Thieves to the curb just like Pres. Obama. I love saying that. It looks like you’ll be getting another chance to vote for her.
Deflection is fun.
Never voted for Hillary. My feeling in 2016 was, out of a nation of 330 million people how does our choice come down to Trump and Hillary? Art Thiel would have been an infinitely better choice. By the way, Hillary beat Trump by almost 3 million votes.
I shall not seek, nor will I accept, your nomination. If you offer a hamberder with covfefe, I may reconsider.
Obviously, Art, you know more than the generals, because you are the chosen one. I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamberder today….while visiting Pleasure at the Colorado border wall, because I am a stable genius, flushing 15 times and by not not smocking or tilting at windmills which may cause cancer. However, I could be busy nuking a hurricane, raking a forest, water-bombing an 800 year old cathedral or searching for the Kurds at Normandy, who I hope are cocked and loaded.
I miss the days of buying Greenland and taking back the Revolutionary War airports from the Brits.
Greenland wanted to buy the Republican Party. The NRA said it wasn’t for sale.
“People can’t breathe and we don’t have anywhere to put them.”
So we move forward together and battle this thing. Look, this set of generations – including mine – has never really been asked to sacrifice anything for country, only to volunteer to do so. Now it’s time for all of us to hold our breath (not literally, but maybe), plan like crazy, and help those people who are most affected. For example, the senate not even taking up the paid leave bill is shameful. It’s wrong, on every level. Some things are not partisan. This is one of them. And the pantspisher-in-chief (actually worse than just urinating, as cast members and crew of Celebrity Apprentice are now revealing) is fiddling like Nero. So, back to sports, the state of Washington’s leaders are protecting the safety of the people. Good for them. It’s going to be painful and at the very least, bizarre, but in the long run, it’s the best way to handle this pandemic.
Given that all scientists are predicting that, like the Spanish Flu that killed millions about 100 years ago, this flu will go into abeyance during the summer — only to spike exponentially higher in the fall — it is best if we can mitigate it now and work on Dr. Fauci’s vaccines. Otherwise, how many will needlessly die?
Thanks for a thoughtful response. Good point about a generation never asked to sacrifice. I do credit our political leaders for formulating a plan. It’s never 100 percent, and will always change, but creates a framework to get electeds and citizens a shared direction.
Some things are not partisan …. as you go on a partisan rant.
Look, Trump is an idiot, completely out of his depth in a situation where gaslighting doesn’t work. He has been demonstrating this beyond dispute, every day over the last couple of weeks. His being a (nominal) Republican has nothing to do with it. No partisanship involved. Pointing this out is not a rant.
Just yesterday, in the midst of global pandemic, Trump was ranting about “the illegal attempted ‘coup’ of the duly elected President!” This pathological self-obsession should be concerning to all of us.
I think we slipped past concern around late 2015.
His 53-member Republican Guard did, however, save the American Ayatollah.
I’m wondering how long before MLB follows the NBA’s example. Especially when MLB has a large number of international players.
Well as of noon Thursday, you have your answer.
Good info on the seriousness of this, Art. We’ve got some real pros in this state as leaders. Months from now, if we all get to complain about an “overreaction,” that will be a good thing! Any one of us may get our life saved by these preventive measures, and we’ll never know.
Yes, that’s the point. Because we don’t have enough test kits, few of us know if we’re carrying. That’s a huge failure by the Trump admin.
Trump fired the pandemic team set up by Obama.
I sincerely hope the Trump team has some successes with this. Several days ago Inslee called Trump “background noise.” I hate to say it, but that might be our best realistic expectation… that he manages to not be an impediment.
A Washington Post story termed him a bystander. Not vitriolic, but it captures his incapacity for empathy.