The New York Times
Virus success in Seattle shows what could have been
SEATTLE – In the face of the country’s first widespread coronavirus outbreak, some of Washington’s top leaders quietly gathered on a Sunday morning last March for an urgent strategy session. The virus raged in a nursing home in the suburbs of Seattle. By the time the meeting began, the region had recorded the country’s first 19 deaths. New cases appear per hour. When the presentation of the meeting came out at the fifth slide, the room became gloomy. The numbers showed a variety of potential outcomes, but almost every scenario was a blue line pointing exponentially upward. Sign up for The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times “My God, what on earth is going to happen here?” King County executive officer Dow Constantine said he was thinking about it when those in the room, who were increasingly uneasy to meet in person, left the cake untouched. The rally, three days before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11 last year, began a rush to contain the virus that had some of the country’s earliest orders to cancel major events, hatch restaurants and lock schools , all in the hope that the terrible possibilities before them would not happen. One year later, the Seattle area has the lowest death rate of the 20 largest metropolitan regions in the country. If the rest of the United States kept pace with Seattle, the country could have avoided more than 300,000 coronavirus deaths. During a year in which the White House underestimated the virus and other political leaders battled over how to curb it, Seattle’s success illustrates the value of united and timely strategies: Although regional experts and politicians in the region have struggled behind the scenes on how best to manage the virus, they came together to present a united front to the public. And the public largely listened. “We could not afford mixed messages,” said Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan. The constraints that went on for a better part of a year caused lives and the economy to spread widely. But as governors elsewhere cite the economy as a reason to ease closures, Seattle’s success has shown an alternative route: amid widespread economic turmoil, the state’s unemployment rate was nationally average, better than some places that continued with larger reopens. , including Arizona and Texas. There are numerous factors that have shaped the trajectory of the pandemic locally as well as nationally. In part, public health experts said Seattle may have benefited from its demographics: a healthy population living in small households and many workers who can do their work from home. The city may also have received more public support for the repression due to the shock that the country’s first published deaths were experienced. The high humidity may have helped, scientists believe, although the cold weather and gray air probably did not. Researchers said Seattle also benefited from its network of research and philanthropic organizations focused on global health, politicians willing to listen to them, businesses that emptied their offices early and residents who repeatedly indicated they were willing is to improve their lives to save others. Already over the course of the year, and the number of cases in the region was among the lowest in the country, a survey found that Washington residents still have the greatest chance of staying home for Thanksgiving. Ali Mokdad, a professor of health sciences at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, said he was convinced the Seattle model could be repeated, which had a positive impact on the orbit of the virus across the country. Instead, he said, state after state would reopen sooner than appropriate, and members of the public ignored health advice that was sometimes undermined by conflicting messages from politicians and business leaders. Seattle shows, according to him, what could have been. “We have so many lessons we have learned here,” Mokdad said. “Unfortunately, not many people listened.” An Early Warning for the Country Even before the state’s early home restrictions were ordered, Seattle residents were willing to change their lives. During the first week of the outbreak, in March, Microsoft and Amazon – which employs tens of thousands of workers in the region – encouraged people to start working from home. Other companies followed. The University of Washington became the first major university campus to accept distance education. While the rest of the country buzzed as usual, the infamous traffic in Seattle eased, and buses that were once full of commuters were largely empty. Pike Place Market fell silent. These early adjustments may have helped the region avoid the devastation seen in New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio had already said on March 13 that “we want people to keep going.” The New York region quickly surpassed Seattle in coronavirus deaths and still maintains the highest per capita deaths among major metropolitan areas. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former commissioner of the New York Department of Health, estimated that New York could reduce its death toll by more than half if it were widespread social week or two earlier. He said the city still had bad messages about the virus. Over the course of the year, after an initial closure period was ordered across the country, many states rushed to reopen against the advice of experts, causing an increase in new business. The Seattle area, where many restrictions were in place, kept its numbers low through the summer. Although restaurants reopened in June, it was limited to 25% inside. Other parts of Washington state had more problems. In the more rural areas east of the Cascades, the virus spread among farm workers, pushing the death toll from Yakima County to more than double that of King County, which includes Seattle, although the numbers from Yakima County were roughly equal to the death toll. which has been seen in many other states. . As numbers in the country rose in the fall, John Wiesman, then Washington’s secretary of health, and dr. Kathy Lofy, the state health officer at the time, monitored the number of cases in the area. When business suddenly jumped in November, they said Governor Jay Inslee had advised that no time would be wasted. “The governor was also very clear: we have to move now,” Wiesman said. Inslee’s renewed restrictions include the closure of restaurants again. The state’s numbers have remained lower than in much of the country. Researchers at the University of Oxford have determined that the range of restrictions throughout the year, according to Washington, is among the strictest in the country. Others with strict controls, including Maine and Vermont, are also among the states with the lowest number of coronaviruses. Some smaller metropolitan areas, including other cities in Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Raleigh, North Carolina, fared better than the Seattle area; they also adopted broad restrictions. But there were other states that introduced strict controls that had serious outbreaks after initially keeping the virus under surveillance. One of them was California. Public health experts have cited a variety of potential factors in California, including more pressure households and the advent of new virus variants that appear to be spreading faster. Mixed messages emerged when Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who were promoting promotions, attended separate birthday parties at the French Water Restaurant in the Napa Valley, ignoring their own best practices and angering a public. made for restrictions. The cost of repression The pressure to reopen in many states was a response to the devastating economic consequences of a long hiatus, and Seattle paid for the low virus numbers. Nowadays, the retail areas in the city center are largely quiet, with many shop windows on board. Streets that were once packed with Amazon workers during lunch are now largely empty. Some businesses have closed forever. Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer in Seattle and King County, said the city is still struggling with the right balance between managing the virus and allowing people to live their lives with more normalcy. The consequences that emerge are not only economic, he said, but depression, domestic violence, delayed medical care, a decrease in other types of vaccinations, the long-term consequences of children out of school. Still, he said, he is convinced they made the right decisions. “The other unintended consequences can be addressed and mitigated over time, but you can not bring people back from the corpse shoulder,” he said. While the industries around tourism and services struggled, others flourished during the pandemic, including the healthcare sector, grocery stores and the technology industry. Construction workers were able to return to work, as well as manufacturing workers at places like Boeing. By the end of last year, the unemployment rate in Washington state was at 6.3%, slightly lower than the national rate, and many business leaders accepted the governor’s extensive accusations without much objection. “We all want to be able to open sooner,” said Rachel Smith, chief executive of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, “but we all want to do it if it’s safe.” Ethan Stowell, who runs a group of restaurants in the Seattle area, said the company started with about 400 employees last year. The number dropped to just a handful early in the pandemic, and then climbed slowly, with fluctuations during the fall restrictions, to now about 140. The restrictions lasted much longer than expected, and Stowell said he still has concerns about the future of Seattle’s downtown, but he expects the summer to give way again, with pent-up demand and constraints easing further. He expects to be at the prepandemic level of employment again by the end of the year. Durkan said the consequences of the prolonged locks weigh on her every day. She said she had heard of business owners losing everything, and laid off workers who could not pay their rent. But the city simply did not have a choice, she said. “It was very difficult because you knew what the human consequences would be,” she said. “There was no course in which human consequences would not be destructive.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company