By January 20th, Washington State confirmed the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States. People were beginning to pay attention. Patient Zero was quarantined and they tracked down anybody who he had come in contact with. They believed that they had successfully contained this virus, which by then had killed roughly 3100 people in China and reports were now coming from Italy they they, too, had cases. However, when days later they found other cases of COVID-19 in people who hadn't had any contact with Patient Zero they had to have known that there was likely a problem on their hands. But still, when the Washington Flu Study began testing their samples for this new virus the CDC immediately shut them down. Their reason? Confidentiality reasons that make absolutely no sense to me.
Italy's cases began to surge, and before they knew it they were in a crisis. The virus, which was known to be most dangerous to the elderly and people with preexisting conditions, swept through Italy's elderly communities like an invisible Grim Reaper. The Italian government issued a mandatory shut-down of all non-essential businesses and told residents to stay home and only leave their houses by penalty of law.
Seeing what was happening in Italy, the state of Washington followed suit: Our Governor closed down all all schools and 'non essential' businesses. He issued the 'Stay Home Stay Healthy' initiative and gave orders us not to leave our homes except for essentials such as food or medications. The playgrounds and parks were closed. Fishing was verboten. Neighbors could speak to one another from their yards. People must maintain a minimum of six feet from each other when in a public place. Panicked, the store shelves were immediately picked over and toilet paper and Chlorox wipes became impossible to find. Face masks were being bought out and the original initiative was for people to NOT buy face masks -- our healthcare system needed them and they wouldn't do any good to keep you safe. After a few weeks they switched their tune and began telling us to cover our faces in public, but to make our own face masks. Restaurants closed except for takeout orders. Hair and nail salons were not essential. Elective surgeries were no longer offered. Dentists and eye doctors shut their doors.
"Flatten the Curve" was preached from every available news source. Frightened people began parroting this and before long you were seen as an uncaring and evil soul if you left your home. If you were careless enough to leave your home without a hand made face mask then you were the epitome of selfishness. Neighbors ratted out neighbors for seeing additional cars in front of their homes. Busybodies snitched on businesses that they deemed 'non-essential'. The unemployment numbers soared. The government's answer? A 3 trillion dollar stimulus package to all people who made below a certain amount of money. Then another stimulus. Then another. Unemployment numbers continued to rise. Most of the rest of the country followed suit. Before you knew it nearly all of the American children were out of school with three months left in the school year.
After two months of the shut down the message began to change. "Flatten the Curve", the overused mantra of people with the intent to lessen the load on our healthcare system against the sudden influx of COVID-19 patients turned into "Shelter in place until we contain this virus" but few people, so terrified of contracting this virus which by now showed less than 1% mortality rate, seemed to notice or care. Mainstream media sources fed a constant IV drip of fear mixed with the sanctimonious message to 'Stay Home' to their listeners. The masses happily complied.
Meanwhile, a bigger problem was manifesting in our country. Crime rates climbed as people lost their income. Suicides skyrocketed as people crumbled under the weight of hopelessness. Business owners who have poured their entire lives into their businesses helplessly closed their doors, some for the last time. Child abuse cases went down; yet hospitalizations of child abuse soared because the children were stuck at home with their abusers with no reporters to inform the authorities of their suffering. Domestic violence increased. People began to die from heart attacks at home because they were so scared to go to the hospital and contract the virus that they preferred to wait it out. Cancer patients refused to seek help, and sometimes their surgeries were somehow deemed to be 'elective'.
As of today, May 13th, 2020, some states are beginning to slowly open back up. Washington State, the first to shut down, remains mostly closed. We could have it worse; the governor of Oregon announced that, despite it's extremely low case and death rate, they will be shut down through June into July. The governor of California announced that LA county will be closed through July.
I fervently believe that history will show that we've done the exact opposite of what we should have done. COVID-19 is hardest on elderly and people with preexisting conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and severe asthma. We had months of data from China, South Korea and Italy before it hit New York City with a bang in late March. We knew that it rarely affected children and that most healthy adults either presented with mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Yet what did we do? Closed down the schools and our entire economy. Instead of paying out massive stimulus packages, efforts would have been better focused on serving our weak and elderly. Committees should have formed that would require hospitals to reach out to patients who are over the age of 60 and people with preexisting health conditions. Special care should have been given to these groups to ensure that all of their needs were met so that they didn't need to leave their homes and could hopefully ride this out until a safe treatment was found. Then the rest of us needed to go on with our lives and get sick. Our children needed to go to school and spread the funk amongst one another. The healthy adults should have gone on with their usual routines. Some of us would get very sick but would almost certainly recover. Most of us wouldn't even notice when we were sick. But we needed to let nature take its course in its most natural way.
But that's not what happened or is going to happen. Instead, they think that we can actually stay at home and somehow contain this airborne virus, which was likely circulating months before they realized it was in the United States. They have the idea that we can enter a gas-filled room with our breath held and think we will never need to inhale. There is no solid plan on reopening our economy, at least not in this state. Only open-ended platitudes and meaningless initiatives.
It feels hopeless.
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