25 Replies to "CORONAVIRUS: Friday 3/6 toplines - newest numbers; library cancellations; SW 112th quarantine-facility update; more..."

• WTH? March 6, 2020 (11:41 pm)

  I find it absolutely baffling that leadership at Seattle Public Schools and Seattle Colleges have not moved to close the schools. Particularly the former. This is not the time for leaders to sit on their hands or to prioritize equity over public health and life. Developing research suggests that the coronavirus is transmitted more easily within households, indicating that children could be an important transmission pathway: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v1So far, SPS’s argument seems to be that keeping children in the classroom reduces household exposure to more vulnerable populations, but I have not seen much evidence to support that. As things stand, those kids are still potentially exposing adults to the virus when going home at the end of the day, and while in school, they are exposed to other children who may be shedding the virus but would not be expressing serious symptoms. The most prudent thing to do would be to quarantine households as much as possible to limit the spread of the virus, but our leaders don’t seem to be motivated or decisive enough to do this. China could get away with it, given their political system being what it is, but in Western countries, limiting the spread of the virus is going to be difficult given our politics and value systems, which I’m afraid will ultimately be a disaster. We’ve only dealt with the ramp-up of cases for a week, so far. This is just the beginning of this problem. This is the kind of problem that really tests the kettle of leaders, and so far ours seem to be spineless. 

  • Embarrassed by his neighbor March 7, 2020 (1:11 am)

    This post is fear-mongering armchair expert BS. There is a disclaimer on that site that literally says that the study you are referencing is not peer-reviewed, and should not be used to guide clinical decisions. Making rash, potentially insanely costly decisions that could jeopardize the financial well being of thousands upon thousands of families based on one brand new, completely unvetted research paper is really not an intelligent thing to do. Additionally, closing the schools may not do anything at all to prevent the spread. Do you really think you know more than a board of people and the EPIDEMIOLOGISTS who they are consulting? Give me a break. My two favorite parts of this post are the admission to thinking completely emotionally, and the call for Chinese style totalitarianism. This is post is a good example of a fearful reaction with a total absence of critical thinking. Closing the schools may eventually be the right thing to do(I doubt that time will come), but let’s let the highly-trained people who study and prevent the spread of disease for a living decide that rather than mindlessly insulting the school board over something we are clearly very ignorant of.

    • Greg March 7, 2020 (6:29 am)

      I agree it’s not time to fear monger, but the CDC clearly is not doing a good job thus far. We have no idea how many people are infected— and maybe we will some time next week (though they said that last week, and fewer than 2,000 people have been tested in all the US). I think it’s easier to overreact for a few days, find out what’s going on with more certainty, and then decide to reopen. If some students with underlying medical issues and some older staff end up dead from this thing, and closing for a few days could have potentially prevented that, people like yourself better not be posting online about “someone should have done something”. 

      • Embarrassed March 7, 2020 (12:28 pm)

        This post is super frustrating because it highlights how uneducated you are about the testing. Do you understand the role the FDA has played in putting up roadblocks for testing? Do you understand how the testing kits work? Do you know how many samples per patient have to be tested? Do you know what the daily capacity for testing in a lab is? Do you understand how lab tests are different in our country than in a country with socialized medicine like Korea? You might want to educate yourself on these things. I agree that  not nearly enough patients are being tested, but this is not because of some lazy reaction from the CDC, it’s a much deeper issue of how our public health system works. One of my parents in highly immunocompromised and would be at extremely high risk for death if he caught COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean I think the solution is a wholesale closure of all public schools. That is a rash, fear-based decision that could have a massive amount of unintended consequences AND MAY NOT EVEN HELP ANYTHING AT ALL. 

    • em March 7, 2020 (8:04 am)

      Let’s be real here, there are no “unbiased, vetted, certified experts” whose word is above all others. The CDC told us a few weeks ago there was no concern. Now we are facing an epidemic that will only get worse. We should be taking ALL news with a grain of salt no matter how amateur boots on the ground reporting or “certified expert” they claim to be and comparing them with ALL other reports and deducing our own conclusion from there.Or are we just going to sit idly by and play red light green light with the “experts” who tell us when to panic and when to remain calm until it’s too late. PEOPLE ARE DYING. EVENTS ARE BEING  SHUT DOWN. THE VIRUS IS MUTATING. These are all facts, they aren’t Alex Jones quotes. 

  • Anon March 7, 2020 (6:25 am)

    Do you think that these were the same conversations that Native American nations were having when the first waves of small pox were coming through? “Should we close the schools?” Do you think that was the topic of the day in long houses throughout our region, or in tepees on the plains? When the bats populate the office towers do you think they will call it “manifest destiny?”  Seattle public schools has made it clear that they will excuse any absences over this. If you can come up with a caregiving plan, or have elderly/medically fragile at home, then pull your kids. It will reduce the numbers left in the schools. For those families that can’t come up with a caregiving plan- why not continue teaching those kids at school, perhaps it will be to their advantage on the standardized tests, perhaps not, who cares. WHO just announced that this is the time to pull out all the stops, but many governments are not. Closing schools would be in line with the real disease expert recommendations on this. None of the research on this disease is robust and peer reviewed. It’s only been 8 weeks folks, this philosophy of “evidence based” practice falls apart in most real situations, because there is just not enough reliable, valid, blinded, significant, reproducible research on just about anything. Decisions have to be made with logic, and love, and history, and feeling, and risk calculations, all with limited evidence. Do you think our local government has been spineless and lacked leadership on this, or have they been too overbearing and invasive? I’m sure they are all trying to strike the right balance, hopefully for the common good, perhaps for their own political reputations. How about our federal government, have they shown leadership? Did they educate themselves about infectious disease, and accept WHO test kits, and stockpile PPE and medications when this started, or did they instead look for opportunities to secure patents for companies in their investment portfolios, and make some money, and work to prop up the stock market? Do we have universal healthcare ready to take on a real challenge to public health? How about robust domestic manufacturing of medications, PPE, medical equipment, technology, etc.?  We have an election coming up. But of course eventually we will give up. We can’t handle social isolation forever, it’s no way to live. Maybe we will get a single vaccine for all corona viruses, and also be free from the common cold along with this COVID 19. Perhaps you will loose a loved parent first, and inherit a house, or wish you had a family fortune burn on ventilators and treatments and caregivers? Perhaps Elon Musk will stop shooting money into space, and put some energy into learning about our planet. Or maybe we will get more and more and more infectious diseases that pile up, and life expectancies drop to that of the late 1300s. But especially, I really hope the bats don’t win.

  • AMD March 7, 2020 (8:21 am)

    They have to weigh the risks against the consequences.  Let’s think about what that would actually look like if SPS were to close all schools and have the kids home indefinitely.  If the kids aren’t in school, someone needs to watch them.  Parents have choices.  They can leave grandparents in charge while they work (who are at higher risk and recommended to stay home).  They can leave the kids home with no sitter (bad idea).  They can take time off work.  Taking time off work is a BIG DEAL.  Many places of employment (mine is one) base health insurance eligibility on how many hours you work in a month.  If you don’t work a minimum number of hours every month, your insurance gets cut off.  Meaning taking time off because of this illness could very well mean losing the coverage you need if you do get sick.  That’s on top of the obvious consequences of not having enough sick pay to keep you financially sound indefinitely, and the inevitable employers that will require a doctor’s note after the third day to keep paying you sick time, which you won’t have because you don’t get those for staying home when SPS closes.  The parents who will be forced to stay home with kids will include health care workers, police, and all these people we want to go to work to do all this extra sanitizing we’re asking for.  Requiring so many people to stop working to be home with kids will produce consequences in containing the outbreak in other ways.  That’s what the Department of Health and SPS are weighing against the chance that groups of kids (who are mostly low-risk with this disease) will not wash their hands, spreading the disease among themselves, then take it home to parents who aren’t making them wash their hands and aren’t washing and sanitizing their own home so they get the illness as well (which they’ll statistically recover from since the age group of the majority of SPS parents is still in the low-risk range).  Parents are still allowed and encouraged to keep their kids home if they are concerned about their own family’s risk (if the kid smokes, has a preexisting condition, or lives with an elderly caregiver).  But parents whose households are at very low risk aren’t forced to grapple with the fallout from protections no scientific or government organization feels they need.  

  • Sam Kothe March 7, 2020 (9:22 pm)

    As a SPS student I’d love for schools to close, sleep is kind of the best thing ever right now.

• Joe March 7, 2020 (6:42 am)

  This is not the first virus for which studies have been done on enforced social distancing. And past studies have shown that it works. Many other places, including Stanford, have closed – I’m not saying it’s the right decision, but other people can play the “do you really think you know more than” game too

• Molly March 7, 2020 (7:51 am)

  The reason we are not seeing more cases is purely because there are no test kits.  I keep seeing that the virus has not been reported here or there, but no one is tested no one is positive.  I am immunosuppressed and am staying home, but I miss my grandkids terribly, and I know they will be a vector. 

• Chuck Jacobs March 7, 2020 (8:10 am)

  35.5 million people sick, 16.5 million seeking care, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths. Coronavirus?   No.   That’s the 2018-2019 flu season,   just the United States. 

  https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

  • K vS March 7, 2020 (6:17 pm)

    All good information but..What we are really worrying about is that we have the same death rate as Hubei Province in China.  That death rate is similar to a really bad flu outbreak.  That is indeed worth worrying about since those deaths would be on top of the flu deaths.  Italy closed schools last week and is about to quarantine 16 Million in the north, China style.  Italy is 1/5th the population of the US and has had 233 deaths vs USA 19.  Their infections and death counts are rising rapidly.  I pray their efforts are successful and that same fate does not befall us.

• Truth March 7, 2020 (8:28 am)

  If schools were closed many of the nurses and doctors you rely on when you are sick will be stuck at home watching there kids.  Same with MA’s Labtechs, schedulers and other support staff.  You would instantaneously cripple hospitals. They did a count at my wife’s work and and 37% of nurses there would have to stay home to watch kids.  Most places are short staffed on nurses going into this.

  • Concerned March 7, 2020 (11:59 am)

    Let’s say we had no choice because if a serious snowstorm or statewide power outage which have occurred in the past, or perhaps the massive earthquake that we will get at some point of which all the frontline workers will have to somehow report to work if still possible. If a first responders child is sick, do they just send their kid to school sick so they can go to work? This most certainly an emergency situation on a much different level but a serious emergency just the same. I see that most of the colleges have all closed down. Keeping kids at school is a big risk no matter how you look at it because they still go home at the end of the day to family members who may have compromised health problems young or older, parents or grandparents.  What do all these people do during summer vacation or weather related emergencies. Schools are not babysitters and we have plenty of at risk school workers. I’m also wondering if they have actual cleaning teams come in and actually sanitize the schools over just some janitor person. They said Chief Sealth was closed for one night for cleaning but that’s an awful lot of ground to cover in just one night to aid in the spread of this virus. Avoid large crowds, well the schools are a large crowd and not only that are an enclosed crowd at that and keeping the kids there as a means of childcare is not helping in preventing of the spread of this illness. 

    • The truth March 7, 2020 (2:52 pm)

      Not sure if you have gone to an clinic or ER during a snow storm but it is terrible because they are understaffed.  Difference is a snow storm doesn’t commonly increase hospital volumes, in fact will often lower them.  This situation will increase hospital volumes and you cannot handle that without full staffing.  I have 2 school small kids in school.  And my household is healthy adults.  If my kids bring it back we will be fine.  If you have a household with underlying health issues pull your kids. Don’t make me pull mine as a precaution.  If you do.  A nurse involved in the vaccine trials and frontline healthcare worker will not be at work.  You want that person at work.

• Yma March 7, 2020 (8:55 am)

  Let’s walk the line – be compassionate, cautious, but not fearful.

• Friend O'Dinghus March 7, 2020 (9:14 am)

  Thank you Embarrassed! This particular subject (across all updates for the last week) has brought forth many comments which I find suspect in motive; almost like those individual posts are offered up by design to purposely propagate fear, despair, & chaos. Not every comment here should be taken at face value. It’s said that knowledge equals power, but accurate knowledge is where it’s really at.

  • Friend O'Dinghus March 7, 2020 (5:44 pm)

    When I said ‘thank you Embarrassed’ above, I was referring to the comment made by the individual going by the name Embarrassed by His Neighbor. The comment that was left after mine today, by an individual going by the name Embarrassed is not the comment I was referring too when I thanked them earlier. I just felt the need to clarify my comment retroactively so there was no confusion. Thank you.

• Mj March 7, 2020 (10:02 am)

  WTH – enough already.  This is fear mongering gone insane.  Healthy school age children are very low risk population.  The focus needs to be towards high risk people, the elderly, smokers and people with underlying health challenges and those that have contact with these people.  And have you thought about the financial implication to parents families who need to work, if their child is not in school many would be forced to take time off and a lot of people have not accumulated enough PTO to deal with an extended closure.

• L March 7, 2020 (10:15 am)

  UW has gone remote for classes and finals, starting Monday. 

• Mj March 7, 2020 (10:53 am)

  L the UW teaches adults the vast majority have computer access.  Further the Campus is still open!  

• M March 7, 2020 (11:00 am)

  At some point we will all get it locally. I’d imagine once testing becomes widely available we will discover that thousands locally test positive. Maybe then people will start becoming less fearful. 

• dcn March 7, 2020 (1:46 pm)

  Teachers are also at risk, and keeping schools open puts all those adults that work in schools at risk too. We have many teachers over 60, and a few who are immuno-compromised. Some of these teachers already have a low bank of sick days due to the conditions that left them compromised. My son had a medical appointment last Monday, and two substitutes canceled, possibly due to coronavirus fears (many in our substitute pool are retired teachers). They ended up having to find other teachers to cover my classes during their prep periods.

  I realize that canceling school might put stress on working parents (including nurses, although I would think the spouses of nurses should step in here too), but schools are the very definition of crowded workplaces. The Seattle Flu study found that when school was out for a long time last year due to the big snow storms we had, coupled with mid-winter break, it slowed the transmission of seasonal flu. There’s a lesson to be learned there.

• J March 7, 2020 (3:30 pm)

  Anyone read Spillover by Quamman? Looks like it was a bestseller for a while.

  • WSB March 7, 2020 (3:52 pm)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/books/review/spillover-by-david-quammen.html
    Side note, interesting that review mentions a passage about tent caterpillars (unrelated to human illness), reminds me of the year they were really bad here in the ’00s.

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