CORONAVIRUS: Friday 4/3 roundup

| Coronavirus | West Seattle news

To mask or not to mask? The new recommendation from health authorities tops our nightly roundup:

‘ADDITIONAL LEVEL OF PROTECTION’: Tonight, the state Health Department sent this statement about mask-wearing:

Washington state is currently experiencing significant community-based transmission of COVID-19. Recent information suggests that a significant portion of persons with COVID-19 may not have any symptoms, and even those who do have symptoms can transmit the infection before showing signs of illness.

The Washington State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend that people wear cloth face coverings when they are in public settings where they cannot maintain 6 feet of distance from others. This might include trips to the grocery store, pharmacy, hardware store, health clinic or similar places.

This recommendation is not a substitute for existing guidance to maintain 6-feet of physical distance from non-household members and performing frequent hand hygiene with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Wearing cloth face coverings will not prevent spread of COVID-19 without these other protective measures.

This is not a mandate that you must wear a face covering. It is considered an additional layer of protection.

Read the full statement here (PDF).

NEWEST KING COUNTY NUMBERS: From the daily Seattle-King County Public Health news release:

2,787 confirmed positive cases (up 131 from yesterday)

186 confirmed deaths (up 11 from yesterday)

One week ago, King County’s totals were 1,828 cases, 125 deaths.

STATEWIDE NUMBERS: 6,966 cases, 284 deaths, up from 3,723/175 one week ago; see the full iist of state stats here.

WORLDWIDE NUMBERS: Find them – nation by nation – here.

MORE TRANSIT CUTS: On Monday, more bus and Water Taxi trips will be cut, since the continuing stay-home order has ridership down to about 30 percent (10% for the WT) of what it would normally be. Here’s our West Seattle-focused update. (Also note that Sound Transit is making more cuts too.)

PARKING CHANGES: The city is suspending more street-parking rules. But not all of them.

EXPEDITING DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS: More rules suspended – this time for public participation in some development reviews. The city has decided they can’t figure out an alternative way for boards to meet for Design Review and Historic Preservation, so they’re changing the rules for six months.

TONIGHT’S SPIRITED SIGHTING: Thanks to the texter who spotted this physical version of the “We’ve Got This” hashtag in Admiral:

GOT INFO? westseattleblog@gmail.com or text/voice 206-293-6302 – thank you!

Akemi April 3, 2020 (10:56 pm)

Could you show us the bar graph and line graph so we can see the result visually? Thank you!

WSB April 4, 2020 (12:10 am)

I don’t have graphs. We provide links so you can explore the local, state, world #s youreslf if you want – there are maps, for example.
AMD April 4, 2020 (3:46 am)

When you open the link WSB provided to the state stats, you can see visuals of the outbreak, just for the whole state (not county-by county). Scroll down, you’ll see a map of Washington counties color coded by number of cases. You can click the arrows below it or the graph titles above it to click through visuals on cases, deaths, testing, hospitalization, and demographics.
Wolfgang April 4, 2020 (5:08 am)

Its just going up and up if you want a graph
sam-c April 4, 2020 (5:52 pm)

Akemi, the reddit user here is keeping track of stats and their google doc has lots of charts.https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusWA/comments/fv3gwi/washington_state_625_new_cases_7591_cases_total/?ref=share&ref_source=link

run_dmc April 4, 2020 (4:20 pm)

So, I’m now starting to wonder about the death totals. Not wonder whether they are true, but just asking questions that I can’t seem to find answered anywhere. Like: 1) who is calling the deaths? Each patient’s doctor? Some central authority? 2) If it’s each patient’s doctor, do we have consistent standards across all medical professionals as to how they are deciding whether a death is CAUSED by CV or someone died and also had CV? 3) And, was the CV verified by a test pre or post-mortem? (For example, if someone dies in a car crash or from cancer, are they also tested for CV; if so was the test post-mortem; if they tested positive, are they included in the CV death totals? 4) These #s are labeled “confirmed deaths” on a daily basis, and paired with this we always see “up from X as of yesterday.” But, doesn’t it usually take some time (and often quite a while) to verify cause of death? So, are the daily death totals people who died days or weeks ago, but the confirmation of whether they had CV was just done the day before? So, for example, we could have 50 people who all died 2 weeks ago and the doctors or medical examiners are getting through 10 – 15 examinations a day to confirm cause of death, so the #s seem to keep going up day by day (which is scary), but it might only be because they are just getting to those 10 deceased people on that day (which is very sad, but not as scary as a daily rising death toll). Anyway, I wish people were giving us more information than just – # of deaths, # of infections, stay home, wash hands.

Anne April 4, 2020 (10:33 pm)

Look at the stats-word CONFIRMED right there. So per Friday-186 CONFIRMED-up 11 from number of CONFIRMED deaths Thursday.
- run_dmc April 5, 2020 (12:50 pm)
  
  Yes – I can read. We do not know what “confirmed” means. When did these people pass away? We still don’t know whether all of the people passed away weeks ago but their overall cause of death is just now known. Does confirmed mean “caused by” CV? Does it mean they have died and also had CV but it may not be the underlying cause? This is the problem. We are not asking any questions about what any of these terms actually mean.

John April 4, 2020 (4:37 pm)

There was a family blowing bubbles from their yard off of Charlestown…so much for the 6 foot rule when the bubbles are floating all around the area. 😳

Sorry, comment time is over.