Washington State Good, New York Maybe Not so Much

We were up and out at 6:45 this morning, heading for Fry's.  Mirable dictu they had several brands of toilet paper.  Jim and I have used more crappy toilet paper in the last five weeks than in forever.  The meat selection was very limited.  I don't need flour or sugar so we didn't go down that aisle.  Produce was looking good.  Even though we were not there for senior hours, there were not that many people in the store.  They were probably sleeping.  We came home from the store, put stuff away, and took a restorative nap.  As we have to get up earlier and earlier to go outside on the bikes, siesta may become part of our daily routine.

This article in the New Yorker is excellent.  The science dominated response from Governor Jay Inslee was just spectacular.  The non-science responses from Mayor DeBlasio and Governor Cuomo were late.  I know, I know, everybody currently loves Cuomo, but let us not forget his current budget will slash Medicaid and the safety net.  He also closed hospitals so they could be replaced by luxury housing, which exacerbated the bed shortage at the height of the pandemic. The article is long, but really worth reading.
The piece discusses the Epidemic Intelligence Service and efforts by the EIS to get people to stay home. Their messaging was largely sidelined by the president's desire to be large and in charge.  It's unfortunate. 

Alumni of the E.I.S. are considered America’s shock troops in combating disease outbreaks. The program has more than three thousand graduates, and many now work in state and local governments across the country. “It’s kind of like a secret society, but for saving people,” Riedo told me. “If you have a question, or need to understand the local politics somewhere, or need a hand during an outbreak—if you reach out to the E.I.S. network, they’ll drop everything to help.”

Today, New York City has the same social-distancing policies and business-closure rules as Seattle. But because New York’s recommendations came later than Seattle’s—and because communication was less consistent—it took longer to influence how people behaved. According to data collected by Google from cell phones, nearly a quarter of Seattleites were avoiding their workplaces by March 6th. In New York City, another week passed until an equivalent percentage did the same. Tom Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, has estimated that, if New York had started implementing stay-at-home orders ten days earlier than it did, it might have reduced COVID-19 deaths by fifty to eighty per cent. Another former New York City health commissioner told me that “de Blasio was just horrible,” adding, “Maybe it was unintentional, maybe it was his arrogance. But, if you tell people to stay home and then you go to the gym, you can’t really be surprised when people keep going outside.”

More than fifteen thousand people in New York are believed to have died from COVID-19. Last week in Washington State, the estimate was fewer than seven hundred people. New Yorkers now hear constant ambulance sirens, which remind them of the invisible viral threat; residents are currently staying home at even higher rates than in Seattle. 

The article will be published in the May 4 issue of the New Yorker, titled "The Pandemic Protocol" if you want to read it on paper.

The person who did listen to science was Jay Inslee.  Washington state did not suffer nearly as much as New York City.  The New Yorker article above talks about that, and so does this article.   It's an opinion piece from March 31, so things have changed, but the main issue is Inslee put science in the forefront and did not use the pandemic as a bully pulpit for re-election.

Today is Melania's 50th birthday.  This is how the orange man is helping her celebrate the occasion.